The North American Council for Freight Efficiency (NACFE) released at the Technology & Maintenance Council meetings a new white paper exploring the “Messy Middle” of decarbonization.
It’s a term NACFE coined in 2018 to describe the current state of the industry, in which a multitude of options are available to fleets as they march toward a zero-emission future.
“I liken the Messy Middle to a smorgasbord where fleets have a wide variety of options,” says Mike Roeth, NACFE’s executive director. “It can seem like an overwhelming number of choices, and we wrote this white paper to bring some clarity to the current situation.”
“We don’t think messy is necessarily bad,” Roeth added. “In fact, messy can be good because it implies a variety of options available for fleets to choose from.”
The key, according to NACFE, is to choose the right powertrain for the application.
“We maintain a fleet of more than 450,000 vehicles and are always looking at ways to optimize our assets,” says Paul Rosa, senior vice-president procurement and fleet, Penske. “We are constantly evaluating powertrain options to determine which make sense for each of our Class 2b to 8 commercial vehicle duty cycles. NACFE’s work on defining the Messy Middle and laying out a framework for evaluating the various options should help fleets have a better understanding of which powertrain solutions will work for them.”
The white paper ties into NACFE’s upcoming Run on Less – Messy Middle event which will take place in September. Participating fleets have not yet been named, but they’ll offer insights into a range of fuels including diesel, natural gas, battery-electric, and hydrogen.
The latest report follows NACFE’s 2023 report on the Messy Middle, which explored the various technologies available to help fleets on their decarbonization journeys.
“The question we try to answer in this white paper is, what do we really mean [by Messy Middle],” Roeth said during a TMC press conference. “A middle has to have a beginning and an end. It’s obvious that the beginning is diesel and very probable – if not certain – that the end is battery-electric and hydrogen-fuel-cell-electric zero-emission vehicles. We believe we are in the middle here.”
The Messy Middle, said Roeth, speaks to the ingenuity of the trucking industry, to bring so many options to the table on the road to zero-emissions. “The industry has created a lot of alternatives,” said Roeth. “I’d like to congratulate the industry, but they certainly helped create a mess.”
But, he added, messiness isn’t entirely bad. While challenging, fleets now have many options to consider that will help them on their path to decarbonization. The white paper can be downloaded at www.nacfe.org.
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