The Solution to High Carbon Emissions on the Road? Gigantic Trucks!
Mon, Nov 26, 2007
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In what at first glance seems like a contradictory move, the British government is pushing gigantic trucks as a way to cut carbon emissions and costs.
Vroom
The trucks are called LHVs, for longer, heavier vehicles, or “superlorries”. They are similar to the Australian “road trains”, although they are a bit smaller. It consists of two trailers joined together behind a single engine. The trucks can carry 60% more than normal trucks, which cuts down on costs and carbon emissions.
The trucks that will be used in the upcoming government trial will be a maximum of 83 feet long and as heavy as 60 tons. A normal trailer is around 54 feet long and weighs up to 40 tons. That’s a 30% increase in weight capacity, but a 60% increase in storage capacity. The “superlorries” are common in several Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands.
Many people will question the safety of such vehicles. However, a recent study found that they were just as safe as normal trucks. A study in the Netherlands found that traffic and road casualties were actually reduced because the trucks reduced overall vehicle mileage. However, they do have less manoeuvrability, and if there was an accident there would likely be greater damage due to the trucks’ increased weight.
Source: Telegraph
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3 Trackbacks For This Post
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kraiger22 » The Solution to High Carbon Emissions on the Road? Gigantic Trucks! Says:
November 26th, 2007 at 10:32 pm[...] Check it out! While looking through the blogosphere we stumbled on an interesting post today.Here’s a quick excerpt In what at first glance seems like a contradictory move, the British government is pushing gigantic trucks as a way to cut carbon emissions and costs. [IMG truck] Vroom The trucks are called LHVs, for longer, heavier vehicles, or “superlorries”. They are similar to (more…) [IMG] [...]
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Graffiti Articles » Blog Archive » The Solution to High Carbon Emissions on the Road? Gigantic Trucks! Says:
November 27th, 2007 at 1:37 am[...] Original post by Robert [...]
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UK Testing LHVs As Way To Cut CO2 Emissions · Environmental Leader · Green Business and Corporate Sustainability News Says:
November 27th, 2007 at 10:59 am[...] heavier vehicles, as a way to cut carbon emissions from the supply chain, Environmental Graffiti reports. LHVs consist of two trailers joined together behind a single engine. The trucks can carry 60 [...]
November 26th, 2007 at 11:11 pm
Hi.
Those big trucks being touted by the government are B-trains, a Canadian invention. Their second trailer is joined by a turntable rather than an A-frame making the units much more stable and better tracking than the truck-trailer type combinations prevalent in the UK and on the continent.
The extra weight is spread over more axles so they create no more road wear per tonne than a normal truck.
Once a truck gets over about 15 tonnes the weight doesn’t make much difference in a collision with a car because of the huge mass disparity. All other things being equal you are much better off with fewer, bigger trucks because there are fewer opportunities for collisions.
We use B-trains extensively in Australia and yes they are safer and more fuel and emissions efficient per tonne of payload carried.
You have to restrict them to suitable routes, as we do, because they do take up more room on turns (swept path).
Cheers,
Bob Murphy
Oz
November 27th, 2007 at 12:13 am
Ummm…isn’t this exactly the reason why it would be preferable to use locomotives to move cargo containers rather than trucks? Locomotives are merely following the same formula that is presented above – i.e. that one giant train can carry far more containers per horsepower than a single-container truck can carry.
The ideal system would be a sort of hub-and-spoke, where containers were moved to hub stations by locomotive, where they would be divided and sorted, and only the final local delivery would be handled by a truck at all. Now THAT would reduce some carbon emissions.