[Big Dave]

Goals are OK to have, but the devil lies in "how do we get there?"

Truckers have embraced the easy aero improvements such as skirts under the trailer and sometimes folding "boat tails." "Super-single" tires are beginning to make an appearance.

The "low-hanging fruit" is being picked but further improvements will cost more and be less effective.

But there are limits. Sooner or later the dominant container is a box and you cannot always work a 'boat-tail' attachment. Specialty trailers such as tankers, flatbeds, dry bulk tanks, and dump bodies just don't lend themselves to being aerodynamically cleaned up. Truckers will resist full wheel skirting because they have to check their tires every time they stop. Adding more work for such routine maintenance will be resented.

One idea getting close is the 'electronic convoy.' Trucker have long known that close convoying (10-15 feet) works quite well but up til now that depended on driver reflexes. Modern communications, radar, and electronic drive train controls make it possible for a driver to manually sneak into range, establish connections, and run along with only the lead driver in control. Bedtter yet would be mechanically coupling the trucks at the right distance and using IR to coordinate control might be the best. Radar might be easy, but you are utterly dependent on a (sometimes frail) electronic device. One radar spacing device goes bad and you might have a three quarters of a million pounds of out-of-control trucks and freight crashing about.

In hilly country the convoy has to spread out to provide cooling air for trailing vehicles. Also, the whole convoy will have to use the Jake Brake a lot more as they are robbed of aero braking by the convoying system. A ten-truck convoy would probably be a twelfth of a mile long.