WASHINGTON, D.C. – Garbage trucks could be the next big thing in hybrid vehicles, as fuel cost pressure, pollution problems, and promising technology is drawing many U.S. trucking industry’s leading makers and fleet owners to hybrid trucks. The trucks, which convert braking energy into supplementary power, aren’t in mass production yet, but that’s almost entirely a pricing issue, according to McClatchy Newspapers.

In the case of hybrid garbage trucks, New York, Chicago, Houston, and other big cities have shown an interest in them; truck makers Peterbilt and Oshkosh are keen to build them; and the Environmental Protection Agency is promoting them as ideal platforms for hybrid technologies that work best on vehicles that do a lot of “stop and go.”

Garbage trucks are without peer in that department, according to Matt Stewart, the overseer of Chicago’s fleet of 500. “You pull up, you idle, you stop, you load. You pull up and do it all over again,” said Stewart as reported by the McClatchy Newspapers. It adds up to 300 to 1,200 stops a day per vehicle. For a conventional diesel, 4 miles a gallon is decent mileage.

Most other hybrid trucks in the prototype and field-test stages that do a fair amount of stop-and-go get good gas mileage. Delivery vans and shuttle buses are approaching production, according to WestStart-CALSTART. The nonprofit group, based in Pasadena, Calif., brings together hybrid truck makers and potential customers.

Fleet owners that are testing hybrid trucks include the Postal Service, which operates 142,000 vehicles, and the two biggest private fleets: UPS (91,000 vehicles) and FedEx (70,000 vehicles). Companies that do lots of commercial deliveries, such as Coca-Cola, also are testing hybrids. Public utilities are testing hybrids as well, including Florida Power and Light, Duke Energy, Georgia Power, TXU Electric Delivery, Pacific Gas and Electric, Southern California Edison, and the Sacramento Municipal Utility District.

According to the McClatchy Newspapers report, hybrid testing has resulted in significant benefits for many fleets:

1. Florida Power and Light’s hybrid “trouble trucks” cut fuel use by 40 percent to 60 percent, according to the McClatchy Newspapers.
   

2. At the FedEx Express division, hybrid diesel-electric delivery trucks cut the soot released into the air by 96 percent and nitrogen oxide pollution by 65 percent compared with diesel counterparts. They also improved fuel efficiency by 57 percent.

The system, developed by the EPA’s National Vehicle and Fuel Emissions Laboratory in Ann Arbor, Mich., and produced by Eaton Corp. of Cleveland, has two advantages:

1. By the EPA’s calculations, hybrid hydraulic systems capture up to 75 percent of braking energy. Hybrid electric systems capture about 25 percent.
   

2. Although hydraulic hybrids offer little to long-haul or high-speed trucking, their ability to kick in a sudden surge in power during acceleration is magical for trucks on severe stop-and-go duty.

To compensate for the higher price of hybrid trucks, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 offers tax credits of up to $12,000 per hybrid truck, which the Internal Revenue Service will oversee. The credit also depends on how much fuel a hybrid truck saves, but the EPA has yet to come out with a system to measure the fuel savings.