With close to 5,000 prime movers, 14,000 trailers, and 6.5 million square metres of warehousing, NFI is one of North America’s largest third-party logistics providers. And since acquiring California Cartage (Cal Cartage) in 2017, it has become one of the nation’s biggest drayage (container transport) providers too.
“Our purchase of Cal Cartage first started the discussion around electric trucks,” explains Brian Webb, NFI’s president of port services, when we catch up with him at the company’s Ontario, California office.
“It was one of the biggest drayage providers across North America, and had a humongous presence in California. The state is at the forefront of being a leader in wanting to reduce carbon emissions.
“Coupled to that, the incentives California provides to reduce your carbon output, and the services Cal Cartage was providing, meant it was clear that we needed to invest in electric truck technology.”
These are sentiments echoed by Jim O’Leary, NFI’s vice president of assets.
“What was happening in that space at that time was almost like the perfect storm,” he adds.
“California was starting to regulate, and the technology was there. We went to the OEMs and told them we want to be a part of this. We said ‘if you’re going to start developing projects, then we want to be part of them’.”
NFI uses three truck suppliers, Volvo being one of the more prominent, with between 35 per cent and 40 per cent penetration. And by coincidence, in 2019 the truck maker was about to embark on the Volvo LIGHTS project (see page 44), which would see it putting its first battery-powered trucks into real fleets.
Under the scheme NFI took delivery of a pair of VNR Electric prime movers.
O’Leary explains that there were initially one or two teething problems, the 110-mile range from the four-battery trucks being a particular issue. “We said ‘that won’t work’, so they immediately designed a six-battery pack truck to meet that need,” he tells us.
The scheme was a resounding success, giving NFI the confidence to invest in more electric trucks. When we visited earlier this year, it had 40 electric prime movers on its Californian drayage fleet, a mix of Volvo VNRs and Freightliner eCascadias.
By the end of 2024 this will have risen to 90, two-thirds being Volvos. This will give it one of the largest zero-tailpipe-emission fleets in the US.
As previously mentioned, there are various pots of funding available for the purchase of electric trucks and chargers in California, and in the case of the Volvos, NFI has gone down three separate routes.
Half of the initial 60 trucks are being deployed with funding support from California’s Hybrid and Zero-Emission Truck and Bus Voucher Incentive Project (HVIP). This project was launched by CARB as part of California Climate Investments to accelerate commercialisation of battery-electric trucks. It is provided on a first-come first-served basis.
A further 20 have been part-funded by the Joint Electric Truck Scaling Initiative (JETSI), which is led by the South Coast Air Quality Management District (South Coast AQMD) and jointly financed by CARB and the California Energy Commission (CEC).
The final 10 from this initial order are part of the SWITCH-ON project, a grant to Volvo Trucks to deploy battery-electric trucks in Southern California for regional freight distribution and drayage. The US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Targeted Air Shed Grant Program is providing the funding.
While the incentives reduce the purchase cost, there is still a significant difference between the price of electric and diesel-powered trucks.
