Aerodynamics: A Trucking Innovation

Transportation and Economy
Transportation and truck driver jobs are the back bone of economy in the United States. Raw materials need to be transferred from market to production facilities. Products need to be transferred to either to further fabrication plants, or consumer markets. Daily fresh food products are moved from their production facilities to super markets around the country. Products from eastern half of the land are moved to western half and vice versa. Movement is a symbol of life and growth.
Trucks in Transportation
Trucking is the most vital part of transportation over land in the United States. Trucking has been serving the nation since the invention of diesel engines. The ease and flexibility of transportation by trucks made them primary mean of goods transportation over land.
Trucking companies have proven to be the most efficient and cost effective way of transportation. It has left train freight carriage far behind in the competition. Major reason for this is the limited range of freight carrier trains. Although trains are much faster and carry more loads than trucking loads, truckers have used the wide spread network of roads and freeways to their advantage.
Apart from the importance of the trucking industry in the country’s economy, in past few years the trucking industry is facing a lot of problems. Market share is shifting to train carriage and uncertain fuel costs are resulting in a higher transportation cost. Authorities are implementing tighter rules to avoid truck accident on freeways. It is tougher than ever for truck transporters to find available loads.
Innovations in Trucks
Recently, however the trucking industry has realized it downward trend and have taken some measures to make a comeback at their position. Truckers now make new innovations to be ahead in the game. Latest technology is implemented in the load carrying vehicles (trucks and semi-trucks). Latest GPS tracking technology offers clients and company officials to locate the truck anywhere in the country. With help of this link new load orders are displayed at the driver’s screen instantly; this optimizes performance of a vehicle in a trip.
Loads carrying jobs are now available online on the truck load boards. This offers customers to choose from a number of transporters and leaves them with more options in cost and time. Transporters also can locate the nearest loads to their position and plan their route to optimize the output.
Trucks are also being overhauled to reduce fuel costs. Turbo charged truck engines have more load carrying capacity and thus they yield more in a trip. Body of a truck can be modified to make it more aerodynamic.
An aerodynamic truck can save up to 23% of the fuel cost as compared to an equivalent truck without aerodynamic design. An aerodynamic truck body moves more swiftly through air. Due to less air resistance in its way there is less energy consumed by the truck to move forward. A truck can be made aerodynamic by adding side skirts to minimize formation of air cortices under the vehicle and avoid “bad” air currents. Back tails design is also very important, as the truck passes through the air rushes in to fill the space this can provide extra push to the truck if tail design is aerodynamic.