Advantages of aluminum for sustainable transportation outlined at Green Truck Summit

Medium and heavy duty commercial truck owners can increase the cargo capacity of their fleets, reduce fuel consumption and emissions, lower their maintenance costs and increase their resale value by using aluminum solutions, says an Alcoa executive who spoke at the CALSTART National Truck Equipment Association (NTEA) Green Truck Summit in St. Louis.

Todd Summe, division manager, Product Design and Development at Alcoa, spoke at the session entitled, “Losing Weight: Lightweight Materials for Commercial Trucks.” He shared the stage with Dr. Carol Schutte of the U.S. Department of Energy.

“Aluminum offers the commercial vehicle industry tremendous advantages to reduce costs, while increasing its sustainability,” Summe says. “Think about the opportunity: aluminum can eliminate 30 tons of lifecycle CO2 emissions and increase payload by 3,300 pounds in weight-constrained heavy trucks.”

Summe, a member of the Technical Committee of the Aluminum Association’s Aluminum Transportation Group, cited a number of research reports that support lightweighting with aluminum, including a new study by the Aluminum Association and Ricardo Engineering on the fuel economy advantages of lightweighting in heavy trucks.

“Aluminum truly is the most sustainable material for transportation,” Summe says. “Research shows that for certain commercial vehicle classes, fuel economy increases as much as 8 percent per vehicle for every 10 percent weight reduction. No other material in the world will give you the combination of high strength, low weight and recyclability that aluminum provides to achieve these benefits.”

A copy of Summe’s presentation can be downloaded at www.alcoa.com/greentrucksummit.