NACFE Offers Tips for Navigating the Messy Middle

From Executive Director Mike Roeth

We just released our second white paper, Navigating the Messy Middle: The Move to More
Sustainable Trucking, during TMC’s spring meeting. We recognize that all the powertrain
solutions that are currently available to fleets can make it difficult to determine which solution
or solutions are best for a specific operation.

But the paper goes beyond just identifying the various options. It also delves a little deeper into
the term Messy Middle. We have received a good deal of feedback on the idea since
introducing it in 2018. Much of it good, but also some questioning our decision to declare the
situation a mess. Well, I don’t think many of us love being in a mess, but we don’t always select
the situations in which we find ourselves.

I think it’s important to point out that when you talk about being in the middle, it implies there
is a beginning and an end. The beginning for trucking has been the nearly 100 previous years
where trucks were powered by diesel and gasoline. And the end, at least from NACFE’s
perspective, will be when the majority of trucks are zero-emission.

Today we are in a middle. Fleets can choose from diesel, renewable diesel, biodiesel,
compressed natural gas, renewable natural gas, hydrogen, hybrids, battery electric, and
hydrogen fuel cell trucks.

All those options are what is making the middle messy. However, you can’t be in a messy
situation if you only have one choice. Messy implies options, and to me, having options is a
good thing.

If you haven’t read the white paper, I encourage you to do so. It presents information on each
of the powertrain solutions and offers a way to evaluate those options by providing a path
forward to help fleets navigate the Messy Middle. It also provides a framework for powertrain
decision making. We expect if you read this, you will want to go investigate our longer paper
from February 2023, detailing these tools even further.

It is likely that there will be multiple decisions on a fleet’s decades-long journey to zero-
emission transportation, so fleets need to be able to find the option(s) that work best for them
today and keep working for them into the future.

I think this white paper, along with our previously released A Need to Refine Class 8 Long-Haul
Trucking, are good resources for fleets looking to move freight more sustainably and they are a
good way to prepare for the upcoming Run on Less – Messy Middle coming in September.