Hunter Truck – Buffalo was featured in the Transportation Association of New York’s (TANY) magazine, Milepost, for the sale of their first EV to customer, Page Trucking. We are proud to partner with TANY, and Page Trucking. Check out our feature below!
“Dan Titus didn’t hesitate to explain why Page Trucking purchased a Peterbilt 579EV electric vehicle, how it plans to use it, what it hopes to learn, and why his carrier tries to be an innovator in general.
But his eyes especially lit up when he was asked how the truck drives.
“It’s eerily quiet,” said the company’s president, who grew up racing cars along with his sister, Piper, the chief financial officer. “You hear things in the truck that you’ve never heard before because they historically get drowned out by the sounds of the engine and the driveline.
“From a performance standpoint, it is an animal. It is amazing, and I think that will help as our drivers get the opportunity to drive it in these different applications. I think that’ll help the adoption rate. It’ll help address some of the anxiety that exists around change and utilizing something new because from a performance standpoint, it is incredible.”
Started by the Tituses father, Keith, and later run by their mother, Debbie, the specialty bulk transportation hauler operates about 1,000 pieces of equipment out of 11 terminals in North America. It services 48 states and Canada.
The carrier had several reasons for being at the front of the line in New York to start plugging in an electric truck. The primary financial driver was the regulatory and legislative environment that is pushing the industry toward zero tailpipe emission vehicles.
“Pretty basically, based on the legislation that’s been passed in the state of New York as we understand it, a percentage of our total miles operated in the state will have to be zero-tailpipe-emission miles,” Dan said. “And therefore, we’re not going to wait because the deadlines are very fast approaching, and what we’ve seen already relative to the runway is that it’s not a short runway to acquire the equipment. It’s not a short runway to ensure you have the power if power needs to be upgraded in a specific area. It’s not just the costing issue. It’s a time issue. So, we’re not going to wait. We’re going to continue to push forward, and we know, based off of what testing we’ve already done with demo vehicles, that there are specific lanes that will allow us to not just be on the forefront of the adoption of it, but also be on the forefront of the meeting of the requirements.
“And that does two things. Obviously, as I mentioned, it helps us get recognized as a leader in the space. But it also gives us a heck of a head start on our competition, who will have to abide by the same legislative requirements that we do.”
Another reason to move forward is the fact that the company’s Fortune 1000 customers are feeling pressure from end users to provide a road map for quantifying and reducing their carbon footprint. None of Page’s customers has yet demanded that it operate electric trucks. But some are asking questions about Page’s plans.
Finally, Page Trucking seeks to be an innovator and an early adopter, and it tries to be as green as possible. The Tituses have tried to be a zero-waste, zero-landfill organization. They installed solar panels at their old headquarters in Weedsport about a decade ago, and when it burned, they installed them at their new one. Electric trucks were the natural next step.
“Our company’s almost 50 years old, and so we’ve learned what things to imitate that are being done really well. And then Dan and I are always trying to figure out what frosting can we put on that cupcake that’s our own innovation,” Piper said.
The total purchase price was almost $500,000 counting the charger, which was installed long before the truck arrived. Part of that cost was offset by a New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) grant of $185,000, which was available in return for the company scrapping an older vehicle. While they are pilot testing the truck to learn about the technology, they also expect to make a profit from this particular unit.
The Tituses bought the truck in July 2022, but it was not delivered until this January in part because of two delays caused by software and hardware upgrades. They remained patient despite their eagerness to get started. At the time of this interview on Feb. 9, they were having decals installed. As soon as that was done, the Tituses planned to start routing the trucks between warehouses and the local customer base and then expanding the ranges to customers, warehouses, and suppliers of those customers. They planned to put it in every application they could and track the data. Meanwhile, technicians have been learning to maintain and repair the truck. Its fewer mechanical components could reduce downtime and maintenance costs, Piper said.
Page Trucking was the first fleet to buy an electric truck from Hunter Truck – Buffalo. The deal started coming together quickly at TANY’s Clean Trucks NY conference in Buffalo in the summer of 2022. Peterbilt had a table and two trucks on display. Dan and Piper had already decided to purchase an electric truck and at that point were deciding on a manufacturer. They decided that day on the Peterbilt for a couple of reasons. One, it had the look and feel of the traditional Peterbilt Model 579, two, to aid in the transition for their drivers. Also, it was the only offering with an option for installing a hydraulic wet kit.
Matt Kersting, New & Used Salesperson at Hunter Truck – Buffalo, who worked with the Tituses, had not expected to sell a truck that day. He said the dealership was learning just like the customers were. Once the Tituses made their decision, he secured the NYSERDA voucher within weeks and had the truck on order by August. He also helped get them in contact with the electric company.
Kersting said much of the industry remains skeptical of the technology. For the past year, he’s been bringing up electric trucks when talking to customers. He tells those who are totally opposed that they should be aware that it’s a coming reality. He’s honest if it won’t work for them now but will work for them in the future. It probably won’t work yet for customers operating five or 10 trucks and needing a certain amount of profitability on all of them.
“Again, it’s not for everybody right now, but there are many companies out there that this will work for,” he said. “Some of our existing customers, or many, are definitely kicking and screaming, but I think it’s going to be an opportunity for new customers to come on board, and for some of those existing customers to kind of evolve.”
The industry has moved past the infancy stage of electric cars and is now walking, though not yet running. Peterbilt offers a tractor and Class 8 truck configuration designed for refuse that can be reconfigured for other applications, as well as Class 6 and Class 7 medium-duty vehicles primarily designed for van and stake body flatbeds. Currently, electric trucks would only work in certain applications with short, defined routes, such as pickup and delivery, that bring them back to a charging location. Hunter Truck is getting interest from municipalities and refuse companies. It won’t work for an over-the-road truck. Electric truck manufacturers aren’t yet targeting that segment.
Hunter Truck has a “pretty extensive” database of companies that it believes could make an electric truck work. Customers have been preapproved for NYSERDA vouchers that remain good for a year-and-a-half. The dealership can help carriers obtain the vouchers; the salesperson completes the forms. It’s first come, first served in New York. The electric trucks are pre-approved, and Hunter Truck is pre-approved as a vendor.
Also working with the Tituses was Paul Fehn, the New Jersey-based Director of Electric Vehicle Sales at Hunter Truck. Fehn has been with Hunter Truck in various sales roles for 10 years and volunteered for this new position. While salespeople like Kersting must break ground with skeptical customers, Fehn’s role is to be the subject matter expert who communicates with those already open to the idea. So far, he’s delivered three trucks with two more to be delivered this year and roughly seven or eight on order behind that. He’s also in charge of other alternatively fueled trucks like Peterbilt’s hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicle that will start production in 2025 with a Toyota fuel cell.
Fehn said there is interest in the marketplace in purchasing the vehicles, particularly in his region of the country. The marketplace is aware that change is coming, although it lacks an in-depth understanding of the technologies that are available and the pace they are being pushed. His dealership has different messages for potential customers depending on their own readiness to invest. Those who are the most interested should pilot one of the vehicles. Those who are least interested should understand the regulatory pressures. Those who are moderately interested should designate a staff member to really learn about the technology.
He said carriers should start getting prepared for electric trucks. Their electricity provider will be their fuel provider, so they need to start building those relationships. Large utility projects have timelines of many years, so now is the time to enter into partnerships that work for both the utility and the carrier.
Once they decide to take the leap, Fehn said fleets should ensure they have charger interoperability, which usually involves a software connection. The charger and vehicle must be able to communicate. They will want to ensure they have proper management software in place on both the charger and the truck to check electricity consumption. They will want to ensure the team knows how to safely interact with the technology.
“There are a lot of customers where EVs will work for them, but there are very few customers that can drop EV into current internal combustion engine routes and find success,” Fehn said. “There’s going to be some level of operational change with anybody who adopts it, and you need to start thinking what that might be for you, learning about the options that are out there, getting a handle around all the different fuel technologies because again, the future of alternative fuels is more than just battery electric, although I do believe battery electric will play a very large role.”
Fehn said Page is the proper scale to be an early adopter who can afford the initial investment.
“More importantly with Page, they have the exact right mindset that customers should have right now, and that is, let’s pilot this for ourselves and learn about, see what we can learn and where it’s going to fit in our operation,” he said. “It truly is a paradigm shift for the industry, so you need to have Page’s mentality to find success.”
Even before the truck arrived, Page had been testing demonstration models. It will be looking at mapping routes to optimize battery use and seeing which ones allow the best opportunities for regenerative charging. At the same time, the Tituses are looking to partner with companies that will allow Page to stay on the forefront. That includes developing hybrid technologies.
“PACCAR makes this product,” Dan said. “We’re going to put this product to work, and we’re going to push it to its limits and see what those limits are. And in the spirit of what Piper had mentioned earlier, we’re not comfortable just kind of stopping here and waiting for the battery technology to catch up, so we have some irons in some other fires that will allow us to look at extending the range in a much shorter time frame than waiting for the electrical grid or the energy distribution system of electric charging to catch up and allow us a greater range.”
Much remains to be discovered through the process. Piper, the accountant in the brother-sister pair, said she’s looking for answers to questions about the length of charge cycles, how weather will affect the hydraulic pump, maintenance dangers, and drivers’ range anxiety. She experienced the latter for about six months after buying a Tesla car last year to gain firsthand knowledge of electric vehicles.
“It’s exciting to talk about what this new technology and things will do,” she said. “But you have to realistically think about what are all the things that are going to go wrong? And then what’s going to be the application, and how’s it going to fit, and how is Driver A going to like it versus Driver B? It’s not meant to be negative about it – It’s an exciting opportunity. But it’s like, you have got to get yourself out there and be testing these things to find out what works and what doesn’t work.”
Many of those questions could be answered by letting others go first and learning from their mistakes. But Dan and Piper said they would rather be on the front end of innovating, marketing to their customer base, engaging in dialogue with the governor, and advocating for their peers. The Tituses scrapped two trucks in exchange for two vouchers. They will be looking to buy another truck.
“We really like that runway,” Piper said. “It’s been a thing that’s worked really well for us. It’s one of the reasons we don’t mind being first adopters on a reasonable scale because it gives us a runway to vet things, figure out things. The people that come in second, third, fourth, those strategies work, but they still need runway too. They still have to figure those things out. So, I think we’ve found that for us having that space to figure out what works and doesn’t work and to be able to push back, it just gets us closer that when it’s go time, we’re more ready.”
See the full feature in Milepost here- https://anyflip.com/ejlw/tocl
For more information on Hunter Truck’s zero emissions options, check out our website! https://huntertruck.com/zero-emissions/
