In many ways, the electric garbage truck is just the starting point.
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“Our whole thing is about security and keeping everyone working here - that’s the most important thing to me.”įor Mack, which introduced a prototype of the Mack LR Electric in 2018, getting the electric truck into serial production is the next step in its electrification efforts, which will lead to an increasing number of electric vehicle models down the road. “I’m sure we’ll be building gas ones for a little while yet, so that will be the majority of our work, but we’re real happy,” said Walt Smith, president of United Auto Workers Local 677. While Mack has plenty of demand for its diesel trucks, the union that represents the plant’s workers said it’s excited the company made the commitment to build the electric vehicles in the Lehigh Valley, which should ensure job security for future generations of Mack employees. Trying to bring semiconductor manufacturers to the United States to alleviate the reliance on overseas plants was just one of the topics President Joe Biden talked about during a July 28 visit to the Mack plant. The Lower Macungie plant, which assembles all heavy-duty Mack trucks for the North American market, now employs about 2,500 people across two shifts and is looking to hire 400 more.Ī major issue for the plant, and most other automakers, has been the availability of parts, specifically getting enough semiconductors from overseas to finish vehicles.
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“You think of a refuse truck - it’s a 50-yard dash 800 times a day, so you have a lot of opportunity for regenerative braking, which is just free energy basically,” he said.įor now, Mack is seeing strong demand for its existing product lineup and is hiring as a result. In addition, garbage routes present an opportunity for the vehicle’s regenerative braking, in which the operator lifts their foot off the gas pedal to stop the vehicle while the kinetic energy lost during deceleration is converted to stored energy in the battery. The refuse industry, Barraclough said, is a good fit for electric trucks because it runs predictable routes and the vehicles return home every day for charging.
The department received its first electric garbage truck in September 2020, when it began testing the vehicle in Brooklyn. In late June, Mack announced that the world’s largest municipal sanitation department, the New York City Department of Sanitation, planned to purchase seven Mack LR Electric models, which will be located in the seven zones of the city. “With the new technology, the price point is quite a bit higher than its diesel counterpart, and to really get the ball moving here, incentives play a key role in customers buying the trucks,” he said.īut Mack already has seen strong interest in the truck. One way to boost those efforts is for federal leaders to develop incentives to motivate customers to make the switch from a diesel to electric garbage truck, said Scott Barraclough, Mack’s senior product manager for electromobility. That’s something that should catch the attention of most Lehigh Valley residents, especially amid the explosion in local warehouse development and the truck traffic that comes with it, said Andrea Wittchen, president of the Lehigh Valley Sustainability Network. As it is now, greenhouse gas emissions from transportation account for about 29% of the U.S. The event, sponsored by the Lehigh Valley Sustainability Network, called on Congress to pass a budget with big investments in clean transportation infrastructure. Many people would like to see that timeline accelerated, including several climate advocates who joined Brunius at the Mack plant Thursday. “The transition period - how long that will be - that is sort of written in the stars.” “This truck is the future for the plant, but the question is then the timeline of when we are moving from diesel trucks into electric,” said Brunius, vice president and general manager of Mack’s Lehigh Valley Operations. And just a few feet behind the truck was Mack Trucks’ Lower Macungie Township assembly plant, which will soon start serial production of the electric truck.
He meant that literally: A few feet away sat a blue Mack LR Electric, a fully electric garbage truck that produces no emissions and operates quietly. Gunnar Brunius stepped to the podium late Thursday morning and said “the future” was sitting just behind him.
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