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by Joe Sullivan

As the old adage goes, you’ve got to do well in order to do good. And a Knoxville-based company appears poised to do a lot of good in curtailing air pollution if its truck electrification system does as well as projected.

The company is IdleAire, and its system is aimed at getting long haul truck drivers to stop idling their engines while they are resting. Since idling is presently the way to generate the power to heat, cool and run electronic equipment in their sleeper cabins and since drivers are required to rest for a minimum of 10 hours after a maximum 11 hours on the road, there’s a whole lot of idling going on.

Every hour of idling time consumes roughly a gallon of diesel fuel; and every gallon of fuel that’s burned also generates pollutants. When multiplied by the 1.3 million longhaul trucks that are on the road each day, the result is more than 50 million tons of emissions a year, IdleAire estimates. Carbon dioxide that contributes to global warming is foremost among them, but there’s also lots of nitrogen oxides (NOx) that are the principal source of ozone.

Eliminating those emissions has been widely recognized to be one of the most effective ways to reduce ozone in the near term. And the Knoxville area is only one of many across the country that must do so in order to comply with new federal standards.

But getting truckers to stop idling their engines requires more than an environmentalist appeal. Nor have anti-idling laws proven to be effective, even though 19 states now have them on their books. After all, who’s going to tell drivers to either shiver or swelter in their cabins or else abandon their vehicles, whose cargo is in their charge.

What’s needed is an electrification system that provides drivers with creature comforts in a cost-effective way. And that’s where IdleAire has to come to the fore with a system that’s designed to appeal not only to drivers but also to truck fleet owners and truck stop (a.k.a. travel center) operators where the system is installed.

While the company has been in existence for four years, it’s only begun to extend its reach across a broad expanse of the 4,400 travel centers that harbor 272,000 parking spaces where truckers congregate nationwide. IdleAire’s ambitious goal is to cover most of them by 2006, and toward that end it now has exclusive agreements with eight of the nine largest travel center chains.

Each travel center installation involves erecting a truss over the parking area from which HVAC units are connected to each truck cabin via an insulated hose. In addition, each cabin gets a service module that provides drivers with everything from high-speed Internet connections to satellite TV and movies on demand. The travel center operator gets 10 to 15 percent of IdleAire’s $1.25 per hour charge for its services. That’s calculated to be more than enough to compensate for foregone profits on fuel sales that are no longer made because engines no longer idle.

Another prong of IdleAire’s sales thrust is aimed at truck fleet operators. Indeed, the company considers them to be its primary customers. The case for using IdleAire’s services starts with fuel savings. The $1.50 per gallon cost of the diesel fuel needed to idle for an hour exceeds the $1.25 service charge, and the company calculates these savings will add up to $3,276 per truck per year.

Drivers are also considered customers, and IdleAire courts them at every travel center where it’s situated. Better sleeping conditions without engine fumes and vibrations is a prime selling point. And then there are all the communications and entertainment services to which drivers can connect.

Reaching IdleAire’s goal of covering more than 300,000 truck parking spaces by the end of 2006 represents a massive undertaking. The company places the equipment and installation cost of each unit at more than $10,000. So deploying more than 300,000 of them will entail capital outlays that run upwards of $3 billion.

To date, the company has raised $90 million in equity capital and envisions raising the additional capital needed through a combination of stock offerings, bonds and other borrowing, as well as governmental grants. According to a company statement, the U.S. Department of Transportation annually awards $1.85 billion in grants for the purpose of meeting federal air quality standards.

If the company meets its ambitious installation goals, it expects to capture a large portion of what’s believed to be a $7 billion-a-year market for its services.

IdleAire’s CEO, Mike Crabtree, is not without experience in growing new ventures into big successes. Crabtree was a co-founder of CTI, the highly successful, Knoxville-based manufacturer of medical imaging equipment. He subsequently co-founded and served as CEO of U.S. Internet, an early Internet service provider that later got merged into Earthlink.

“An entrepreneur looks for places where there’s no competition around,” Crabtree says. And he believes the truck electrification market represents such a place. “We’ve got a business concept patent that covers provision of HVAC services in conjunction with electricity, telephones and television, so we believe we’re protected on that,” Crabtree asserts, while acknowledging that “there are a couple of other people who are trying different pieces of it.”

He also cautions that “anytime you go into a new industry with a new product, you’ve got to get accepted, and that takes a period of time.” But time should be of the essence in realizing the contribution to better air quality that truck electrification can provide.

April 8, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 15 © 2004 Metro Pulse