FRANCE TO INVEST $100M IN LAGOS TRANSPORTATION

Lagos State transportation witnessed a major breakthrough as the French Government indicated interest to invest the sum of $100 million to ensure effective and efficient transportation system in the state. Country Director of French Development Agency (FDA), Luc Bonnamour, disclosed in a courtesy visit to Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN) at the State House in Alausa, Ikeja.

Addressing Fashola and some state executives, Bonnamour said the visit was to explore priority areas in the state that would help renew the partnership between France and Nigeria particularly in the area of support for development. According to him, the French Government is conscious of the growing population of the Lagos Mega city and the critical need of efficient and effective transportation system to make life easier and better for the residents.

He added: “The fund will be made available next year as a boost to the effort of the state government as it is making effort to develop the transportation sector as part of its 15-point agenda.”Also speaking at the meeting with the governor, Leader of the French delegation, Senator Jacques Legendre,  said that France was ready to partner Lagos to develop areas such as “water and sanitation, transport and housing.”

According to him, “This would also include support for Nigerian small and medium enterprises through micro-finance," adding "Our delegation is convinced that France would benefit immensely from deepened cooperation and increased partnerships with Lagos State in economic, institutional and cultural sectors.”

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CAPACITY SITUATION STILL LOOMS LARGE FOR SHIPPERS AND CARRIERS

Despite some recent sequential increases in trucking volumes, capacity has steadily continued to leave the marketplace in recent quarters.

The reasons for the capacity exodus vary, but they generally come back to common refrains, including: low demand and consumer spending in conjunction with tight credit markets. A major topic in the trucking industry going back well more than a year on the capacity front is that when the economy comes back, there will not be nearly enough capacity to meet future requirements.

This sentiment has been followed with the mindset that when the economy fully recovers, the capacity picture will not be pretty, because when demand returns carriers will be scrambling to add capacity. FTR Associates President Eric Starks said this is because carriers are not going to “add capacity ahead of time, because that requires cash on hand and freight to move.”

While these signals appear somewhat ominous, there are some signs things are improving on the capacity front, according to a recent report by Avondale Partners analyst Donald Broughton.

In his report, Broughton notes that in the second quarter Avondale estimates 370 companies with an average fleet size of 18 trucks—representing roughly 6,725 trucks or less than 0.4 percent of the nation’s over the road heavy duty truck capacity—were pulled from the road. What’s more, Broughton explained this is the lowest number of companies being recorded and the smallest average size recorded since the first quarter of 2007.

“The rate of companies failing is less than 40% of what it was in the second quarter last year and with the drop in the average size of fleet (from 47 to 18); the total number of trucks being pulled from the road is less than 15% of last year's second quarter rate,” wrote Broughton. “This estimate does not include the industry wide trend, especially in larger fleets, to rationalize the size of their ongoing fleets. However it does represent a marked decline from the 46,025 trucks pulled from the nation's highways in the second quarter of 2008.”

Even with these encouraging signs, larger problems loom when it comes to truck tonnage volume—and capacity—returning to healthy levels that reflect a healthy and productive economy. As things stand, tonnage is still well below last year’s levels, with the American Trucking Associations reporting this week that its advance seasonally-adjusted For-Hire Truck Tonnage index in July is down 10.4 percent year-over-year, although it has been up on a sequential basis two of the last three months.

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AN UNCONVENTIONAL LOOK AT TRUCK EFFICIENCY

Efficiency of a truck depends on a lot of factors. It stems from what they eyes see to that which cannot be seen.
According to a group of researchers and consultants, doubling the efficiency of trucks wouldn't be easy, but it can be done in a decade or less.

 Before you dismiss them as ivory-tower dreamers, you should hear them out. While some of the ideas are certainly unconventional, beneath all the awkward academic language is a solid concept that just might deliver on such a wild premise.

The group, the Transformational Trucking Charrette (charrette apparently being a fancier way of saying workshop), which was sponsored recently by the Rocky Mountain Institute, a nonprofit research organization focused on energy and resources conservation.

With the goal of breaking down the barriers to doubling truck efficiency by exposing fleets, OEMs, industry organizations, suppliers, government agencies and even consumers to “essential and perhaps counterintuitive facts on advancing heavy-duty trucking efficiency”, their submission starts with defining truck efficiency not by miles per gallon or fuel consumed, but by ton-miles per gallon or freight delivered.

In a paper released by the group, titled, “14 Things You Probably Never Considered About Making Trucks More Efficient”, they stated, “reducing energy consumption by the trucks themselves is relatively easy, Current technologies like APUs, wide-based tires and improved truck/trailer aerodynamics can improve overall vehicle efficiency by a factor of 2.3 to 2.7, it contends. Developing technologies such as hybrid powertrains, regenerative braking and more efficient diesels will make it possible to find even more gains.

As significant as those gains might be, “efficiency can be vastly improved by increasing the weight limits and length of trucks as well as reducing vehicle speed,” the report says. A current tractor-trailer combination loaded to the legal 80,000-lb.-GVW limit and getting 6.5 mpg has an efficiency rating of 130 ton-mi./gal., according to the group's calculations. Boosting that combination to 12.5 mpg would deliver 275 ton-mi./gal., a significant efficiency gain. However, moving to highway doubles with that same optimized truck would drop mpg to 8.7 but see overall efficiency jump up to 335 ton-mi./gal.

The barriers that must be breached to reach this kind of efficiency are many. Federal environmental regulations have emphasized controlling emissions at the cost of damaging fuel efficiency, the group points out. Differing policies between states, counties and even cities on size, weight, idling and now emissions regulations also keep trucking from maximizing efficiency. Fleets are part of the problem as well, with their small profit margins and a “risk-averse culture” that makes them “reluctant to change and try new technologies,” the group says.