Mission

NACFE, The North American Council for Freight Efficiency, works to drive the development and adoption of efficiency enhancing, environmentally beneficial, and cost-effective technologies, services and methodologies in the North American freight industry.

An unbiased and fuel agnostic organization, NACFE communicates the benefits, challenges and the payback of investing in various fuel-efficiency options summarizing the confidence fleets should have in adoption. NACFE is an effort for fleets, manufacturers, vehicle builders and other government and nongovernmental organizations to come together to improve North American goods movement.

One of the ways NACFE does this is through its Run On Less freight efficiency demonstrations. In 2023, NACFE is conducting Run On Less – Electric DEPOT which will focus on the scaling of electric trucks across a variety of market segments. It will build on valuable data gathered during Run on Less – Electric but will focus on how to go from one or two EVs to 15 or more.

 

History

2009

The North American Council for Freight Efficiency (NACFE) was formed following a 2009 meeting with RMI (at the time: Rocky Mountain Institute). Meeting attendees representing a variety of industries determined that an unbiased, comprehensive group would help the trucking industry navigate the large number of energy efficiency technologies and practices available in the market.

2010

NACFE was officially formed in 2010 with the group's founders serving as the first Board of Directors. In 2012, NACFE completed its first Fleet Fuel Study, a review of currently available technologies for improving freight efficiency. In 2017 this study included data from 19 fleets operating 71,124 tractors and 234,292 trailers showing adoption curves for 85 technologies in the past 12 months.

2014

In 2013, NACFE began collaborating with Carbon War Room, founded by Sir Richard Branson, which merged with RMI in 2014, and in 2014 formed the Trucking Efficiency Operation. Trucking Efficiency completed 15 Confidence Reports on a wide variety of technologies and practices that help fleets and fleets and owner-operators improve their fuel efficiency.

2018

NACFE expands its strategy to begin to guide future revolutionary change while continuing to scale available technologies and promote emerging ones.

2019

Conducted Run On Less Regional with 10 different fleets and leveraged data from duty cycles to create insights for battery electric and hydrogen fuel cell trucks.

2021

NACFE kicked off 2021 announcing its next Run on Less demonstration would be ELECTRIC and feature fleets using electric trucks in daily operation. On March 31, NACFE announced the 13 fleet and OEM partners that would participate in Run on Less – Electric. The event would take place over three weeks in September. In May, NACFE began the Electric Truck Bootcamp, a 10-part educational series to increase industry awareness of electric trucks, provide professional development opportunities, and convene fleets and other stakeholders across the electric truck ecosystem to discuss key opportunities and challenges as they plan for future deployments of electric vehicles. Run On Less – Electric kicked off September 2, and fleet profiles, videos and metrics are available on runonless.com.

2022

In 2022, NACFE published four use case reports on battery electric trucks based on work we did from 2018 to 2021, findings from Run on Less – Electric and the work of the rest of the industry on the role of battery electric trucks in freight movement. The four use case reports focused on vans and step vans, medium-duty box trucks, terminal tractors and heavy-duty regional haul tractors. After a three-year hiatus, NACFE issued its Annual Fleet Fuel Study, which contains the results of a deep dive into the adoption of products and practices for improving freight efficiency among major North American fleets. We also presented at a record number of events — two-thirds of which were in person — and expanded the types of groups we speak to including utilities and others.