facilities. Tat means fleets have to save money on fuel. Typically, CNG or LPG cost less on a per gallon equivalent basis than diesel or gasoline, so the best alternative fuel choice from a financial perspective is the one that burns the most alternative fuel. For example, say you pay $15,000 extra for an alternative power school bus to replace an existing diesel, but the cost for the alternative fuel is $1 less per gallon than diesel. Tat means your payoff period will be shorter if the new bus burns 3,000 gallons of alternative fuel a year than if it burns only 2,000 gallons of a traditional fuel. In short, if you don’t run the alternative power vehicle enough, you just can’t pay yourself back in time. In other words, you can’t offset the higher upfront cost soon enough to make the switch worth the investment. A few school districts and contractors will pay more to operate “green vehicles,” to run domestically sourced fuels, or to hedge their bets against fuel market volatility. Tey still want at least parity with their conventional power choices, and reducing costs would be better. Tere is a lot of impetus to provide an environmental benefit and at the same time save dollars. Success with alternative power is about making sure that


the ROI for a given alternative power choice overlaps as perfectly as possible with the demands of a job that has to be done. It is also about making sure that the business case is as neat a match as the performance profiles.


HELP IN MAKING THE DECISION School bus manufacturers are now informing us on the


performance benefits of the latest and newest power train offerings in diesel, propane, CNG, electric and, holy cow, even Type C gasoline power! To learn more about the actual performance of alternative fuels performance and these new- er engines, meet with manufacturer representatives and your peers at trade meetings. If you are unable to do that, then contact your state school bus operator association, NAPT or NSTA to get names of users who would share their experi- ence. Believe it when we say, we are all in this together. Also, some of the best “networking advice” comes from the manufacturers’ dealer representatives, who are dialed into a large customer base and therefore have access to veri- fied performance data. To learn more about the selection and performance capability of current engine offerings, check informative trade publication, such as STN Magazine’s Annual Buyers Guide, which illustrates the number of power train offerings specific to our industry and provides contact information of the manufacturer’s representatives, who could provide all the necessary technical data for review. ●


Pudlewski is STN’s technical editor and a 40-plus year veteran of the school bus industry. He is the retired vice president of fleet operations, procurement and maintanence for Laidlaw and is a member of the National School Transportation Association Hall of Fame.


SUCCESS THRU SIMPLICITY www.actusa.us.com


Toll Free: 877.228.4247


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