In October, city council authorized the purchase of two electric refuse trucks. “It’s great technology,” says Matt Kulhanek, the city’s fleet and facilities manager. But he has no idea when they’ll arrive; he’s still waiting for two the city ordered in 2021.
“Everything in the industry has changed since Covid,” he explains. “The whole supply chain has gotten crazy. We have a couple of [hybrid] fire trucks on order, and they’re telling us two to two-and-a-half years to get them.”
The e-trash trucks, part of the city’s commitment to carbon neutrality, come at a cost: They are “in the ballpark of $300,000 per vehicle more expensive than a diesel one,” says Kulhanek. The first two, both rear-loading Peterbilts, were about $600,000 apiece; the automated side-loading Macks ordered in October will each run about $741,000.
Kulhanek is expecting the first Peterbilt will finally arrive this month, and he’s eager to see how it performs. “We want to make sure that they are going to meet all of our demands for our routes and our operations,” he says.
Kulhanek hopes to see a significant reduction in maintenance costs for the electric chassis. But he notes that the hardworking hydraulic system that compacts the garbage “hasn’t changed … From a maintenance perspective, you’re still going to have hydraulic leaks and have to replace hydraulic hoses.”
Kulhanek expects the second Peterbilt will arrive about six months after the first. But until he sees them in operation, he’s not prepared to bet everything on battery power. So just in case, in October he also got council approval to order two more diesel trucks.
“This is just me being a fleet manager,” he explains. “You never want to be Version 1.0 on anything. I’m sure there’s going to be some downtime. The nice thing is, with the electric configuration, a lot of it is basic software upgrades. It’s not, ‘Oh, we have to replace this part or that part.’
“It all boils down to the purpose of this vehicle,” he says. “It’s great that it’s electric. But people don’t want to hear, ‘I didn’t pick up your trash today because, hey, what’s broken down is an electric truck.’ That doesn’t get the garbage picked up.”
