Whether it’s all-electric or fuel cell Class 8 trucks, J.B. Hunt Transport, like other carriers steering towards green powertrains, doesn’t want to get burned.
J.B. Hunt is currently testing an all-electric Freightliner eCascadia and by the end of 2022 they’ll be taking on a pilot with Navistar to test International RH Series fuel cell trucks built with longtime fuel cell developers at General Motors.
Craig Harper, executive vice-president and chief operations officer at J.B. Hunt, said the company “couldn’t be more excited about working with different alternative fuels, looking for a lower carbon footprint, lower pollutants on the NOx side.”
It’s just that this time around they’re going to be a little more reserved about alternative powertrains.
“I was wrong early. I was excited about natural gas and we were really hoping that would play out to be a big answer for us and we saw that it didn’t have that total cost of ownership that we needed and that’s why we’re going to be careful when we evaluate all of the battery-electric and fuel-cell electric,” Harper said during a Plug and Play hydrogen fuel cell truck webinar hosted by CCJ Senior Editor Tom Quimby.
“When you look at that purchase price of the truck, when you look at the weight and range, when you look at the availability of the fuel supply, when you look at the uptime—you’ve got to take all of that into account,” Harper said. “Sometimes when we get so excited about this new technology we fail to take all of that into consideration.”
But Harper is leaning in and listening more carefully to what the experts have to say about emerging zero-emissions technologies. He’s also listening to his drivers who’ve gotten behind the wheel of the eCascadia which is similar to a fuel cell truck except that it relies solely on batteries and not a fuel cell to provide power to electric motors.
