FARMINGTON HILLS, Mich. — You don’t need a crystal ball to predict the future of the work truck industry. Start instead with a trip to Indianapolis to attend the Green Truck Summit, March 7-8, 2011.
The Green Truck Summit is jointly produced by the National Truck Equipment Association (NTEA) and CALSTART. It will be held in conjunction with The Work Truck Show 2011 and 47th Annual NTEA Convention at the Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis, Ind. The Work Truck Show runs March 8-10, 2011, with educational programming beginning March 7.
Now in its fifth year, the Green Truck Summit is the leading educational conference on green technology for vocational trucks. It provides practical, real-world information on green vehicle funding and partnership opportunities, implementation of green fleet programs, carbon footprint and idle reduction techniques, hybrid chassis integration, fuel utilization improvements and more. It also brings together industry leaders to provide a look into the future of commercial trucks.
The Green Truck Summit will include 18 breakout sessions, six general sessions and two keynote addresses over a day and a half. During the first general session, “Moving Forward: Truck Technologies Leading Us to the Future,” John Boesel, president and CEO of CALSTART, and Jim Carney, NTEA executive director, share their vision of the work truck industry landscape of the future. They will discuss current and upcoming trends in clean technologies, which will improve fuel economy and reduce emissions for commercial vehicles. This session takes place at 9 a.m. on Monday, March 7.
Representatives of Freightliner Trucks, Navistar Inc. and Eaton Corp. will cover “Planning for 2016 Fuel Efficiency Regulations: An OEM and Supplier Discussion” at 10:15 a.m. on Monday, March 7. In this session, they will address how OEMs and suppliers plan to support the work truck industry in preparation for regulations being developed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to require medium- and heavy-duty vehicles to meet specific fuel efficiency requirements starting in 2016.
Day two of the Green Truck Summit kicks off with a keynote address by Connie Burek, solutions specialist, heavy equipment and truck, International Business Machine Inc. (Brimfield, Ill.) and Rob Stevens, chief engineer, Ford Commercial Truck (Dearborn, Mich.), as they provide “A Sneak Peek at the Trucks of the Future.” Burek and Stevens discuss the work truck of the future, including what it will look like and technologies that will lead to reductions in fuel use and emissions. This presentation takes place at 8 a.m. on Tuesday, March 8.
The final general session of the Green Truck Summit 2011 is “Gaseous Fuels: What’s Working Now; What’s Coming Next,” at 10:15 a.m. on Tuesday, March 8. Recognizing that gaseous fuels have the potential to reduce internal combustion engine emissions and the reliance on imported fuels, this session examines current and future gaseous fuels, addresses the benefits and shortcomings of each, and provides an overview of some of the real-world issues involved in transitioning a fleet to a gaseous fuel. The session is presented by Bill Burns, fleet operations manager, City of Columbus (Columbus, Ohio); Steve McConnell, lead fuels engineer, Center for Transportation Research, Argonne National Laboratory (Argonne, Ill.); and Marianne Mintz, transportation systems planner, Center for Transportation Research, Argonne National Laboratory.
A complete Green Truck Summit schedule is available online. An overview of the event is available here.
