Fuel Efficiency
For long and short-haul operations, the greatest opportunity to reduce distribution costs comes from improving fuel consumption. Despite drastic decreases in fuel prices, diesel remains at approximately $2.75/gallon. For the typical long-distance tractor-trailer rig that is driven in excess of 100,000 highway miles per year and averages about 6 miles per gallon, fuel costs can exceed $45,000 per year. Short haul delivery services tend to operate shorter runs and at lower average driving speeds, but still tend to average at or below 12 mpg. With an estimated 50,000 total annual miles driven, fuel costs for short haul trucks can exceed $11,000 per year per vehicle for domestic operation.
At highway speed as much as 65% of fuel consumption goes to overcoming air resistance, or aerodynamic drag. Making heavy trucks more aerodynamic and reducing air resistance has been proven to greatly increase fuel efficiency.
Significant fuel economy improvements of up to 11.5% highway fuel economy improvement were demonstrated in a 2007 research report prepared for the National Energy Technology Laboratory by the Truck Manufacturers Association using devices developed for the tractor trailer gap, trailer side and trailer wake, similar to those aerodynamic truck and trailer devices patented under the Optimator™ family of products. At normal highway speeds a 10% drag reduction is estimated to save about 5% on fuel consumption of heavy commercial vehicles. As speed increases further the rate of savings increases even more.
Licensing and Production
Licensing is available with a very low initial license sign-up fee and a very reasonable per-unit royalty. Manufacturing cost and production itself is the responsibility of the licensee, giving each licensee the flexibility in selecting materials, design details including manual versus automatic operation, specific geometry, color and other factors, and also eliminating any intermediate marked-up costs in your finished product.
Initial license fees are available on a range of fee schedules best suited to your business size and marketing expectations. Licensing options begin with a very nominal initial license fee and a related license royalty schedule for each unit after it is sold that is based upon a small percentage of the projected one-year fuel economy savings from deploying Optimator™ patent-based products on your trailers and truck bodies. The initial base package includes 5 prototype licenses for making test and development sets and a basic license rate schedule up through several higher (but still very reasonable) options for a higher initial fee covering additional test and development units and a lower per unit license fee for production unit sales. Every license level provides access to the full package of Optimator™ patents with no minimum commitment for ongoing production quantities.
