Not only does the City of Seymour’s RunWise truck save fuel and labor, it is also cleaner for the environment.
For the City of Seymour, IN, “going green” was an easy decision. The City offers its roughly 20,000 residents a free recycling program that provides curbside pick-up of unsorted recyclable materials. To help pay for the program, residents’ recyclable trash is sorted through a local company, and items of value, such as scrap paper or aluminum cans, are sold.
Fuel Expenses
Despite help from the sale of valuable recyclables, the City’s budget remained tight. It would be difficult to maintain the free recycling program due to the fuel it was taking to run the routes. The City of Seymour needed an alternative that would save money in fuel and decrease the cost of labor associated with running the weekly routes in order to continue offering a free recycling program to the community. “For the recycling program, we were running three quarter-ton pick-up trucks with trailers,” said Dick Wilde, director of public works for the City of Seymour. “For those three trucks, we had six employees who would drive the routes. These trucks were only getting about 1.3 miles per gallon. Combined with the cost of labor, it was expensive to keep up.”
For the Public Works Department, saving money in fuel and labor costs became the ultimate priority. The answer for the City of Seymour came when the Greater Indiana Clean Cities Coalition received a call from Stoops Freightliner, a distributor of Autocar, LLC—a green leader in severe duty truck manufacturing. Autocar could provide a refuse truck that featured a hybrid hydraulic transmission that would provide dramatic fuel savings when put into routes in the City.
The Hybrid Drive System
Parker Hannifin (Cleveland, Ohio), a global leader in motion and control technologies, developed RunWise, an advanced series hybrid drive system. The system significantly reduces fuel consumption and operates efficiently for urban routes during refuse collection. By combining hydraulic components, advanced control software and brake energy recovery technology, more than 70 percent of a vehicle’s otherwise lost braking energy is recovered. This stored energy is reused—saving fuel—to power the truck during collection routes.
The major subsystem of the Parker RunWise system is a power drive unit (PDU) containing three gears, equipped with two drive modes: mechanical and hydraulic. The mechanical mode is used for highway efficiency. When in hydraulic mode, the PDU operates with the hydraulic fluid supplied through the secondary pump/motor to drive the truck in hydraulic low and hydraulic high. The secondary pump/motor receives the hydraulic fluid from the high pressure accumulators. The system always monitors the accumulator’s state of charge to ensure optimum performance. The truck operates in hydraulic low function from 0 to 25 mph and hydraulic high function from 26 to 44 mph.
“When I heard about RunWise, I knew it was the perfect fit for Seymour,” said Kellie Walsh, executive director of the Greater Indiana Clean Cities Coalition. “The City was using trucks with wagon trailers to run the routes, and spending a lot of money on fuel and labor. The RunWise truck would be better looking, less expensive and quieter. It would reduce fuel costs so much that the City could keep the program free.”
Increased Productivity, Less Fuel Consumption
With the help of the coalition, the City received a grant from the Indiana Office of Energy Development and the State’s American Recovery & Reinvestment Act fund. Right now, the City’s RunWise truck is running a regular trash route and will be used in the recycling program. “I wish I had two more RunWise trucks,” said Wilde. “With the old trucks, it would take about seven hours and six people to run about 700 stops. With RunWise, it only takes six hours and one person. And it’s a smoother ride for the driver overall.” In addition to increased productivity, the City’s hybrid refuse truck is consuming on average 52 percent less diesel fuel than a non-hybrid (2.5 miles/gallon versus 1.3 miles/gallon). Wilde expects that this will increase when the hybrid truck is fully implemented into the recycling program.
“We needed to save money in fuel, especially with the way gas prices are increasing,” said City of Seymour Mayor Craig Luedeman. “Getting this truck allowed us to answer that need. In some cases, we have experienced 60 percent fuel savings when the truck is running a route. This is 10 percent more than the average Parker projected. We are also saving significant money in workman’s compensation. Everything is going great.”
In addition to fuel savings and labor, one RunWise truck operating its route for just one year lowers CO2 emissions by as much as 48 tons1, the equivalent of the carbon sequestered by a 10-year-old stand of 1,121 trees2. “The environmental benefits were important because the truck is not only saving fuel and manpower, but it’s cleaner for the environment,” said Wilde. “That is very important to our community. We worked very hard to let the community know that this will be better for our City in more ways than one.”
With increased fuel savings and a significant increase in efficiency for the City’s refuse and recycling program, Wilde expects that his department can justify purchasing two additional trucks to replace the automated conventional diesel trucks that run the regular trash routes in his city. “As our other trucks get older, those will probably be replaced with RunWise,” said Wilde. “It just makes sense. According to how well our RunWise truck is doing, I think we’ll be able to use it for 14 to 16 years. I think that’s definitely reasonable.”
For more information on the Parker’s RunWise technology, visit parkerhybrid.parker.com.
Notes
1. EPA figures
2. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator