It’s sometimes hard for me to believe, but I have spent the past 37 years in the trucking industry. I had said I was going to stop counting and say more than 30 or 35, but now I say it with pride, not worried about how old I am getting. While I have held various jobs and worked for various companies, all of my professional career has been spent in this industry.
I have been thinking about what has kept me in this industry for so long, and the answer is the people. Trucking is full of some really great people and while there is a great deal of competition among all the truck and component manufacturers and among fleets and even among parts distributors, dealers and repair garages, there is also a lot of collaboration.
The trucking industry has faced a lot of challenges since I first entered it, but somehow, we have risen above all of them. Consolidation of the '80s, emissions regulations of the '90s, economic challenges of the '00s, and now moving to carbon-free freight movement, to name a few. And we have mostly done that through collaborating to find solutions that are best for the entire industry. That sometimes means that one side or another has to compromise a bit, but compromises happen, and the industry moves forward to tackle the next challenge thrown at us.
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I am convinced that electric and hydrogen trucks are coming fast and that successfully deploying them at scale might be the biggest challenge we as an industry have faced and will potentially face in what is likely to be a 50-year career for me.
We must work together to get to a zero-emissions future. But we are going to have to add some new colleagues to our collaboration process. This is going to include utilities, providers of charging infrastructure, connectivity developers, and more. It is likely that we are going to have to educate them about the trucking industry and the way we operate. But we are also going to have to be open to learning about these other groups and try to understand their challenges because their trials are different than ours.
The ultimate smooth transition to zero-emission vehicles has to offer something for everyone. Getting a solution that works for everyone will require new forms of collaboration. Based on what the industry has done in the past, I am very confident we will conquer this challenge the way we always do—by listening, learning, and collaborating. If history is any indication, we’ll be very successful at overcoming this new challenge.
Michael Roeth has worked in the commercial vehicle industry for nearly 30 years, most recently as executive director of the North American Council for Freight Efficiency (NACFE). He serves on the second National Academy of Sciences Committee on Technologies and Approaches for Reducing the Fuel Consumption of Medium and Heavy-Duty Vehicles and has held various positions in engineering, quality, sales, and plant management with Navistar and Behr/Cummins.
