[bondo]

Wal Mart has been involved in testing new fuel saving devices and technologies for heavy trucks for years. In the latter 1980's into the 1990's Wal Mart ran International cabover style trucks exclusively in their fleet. These flat front cabs were like driving a brick down the freeway and I remember when you passed them, you could feel the bow wake coming off the front of the truck push your car sideways. That is a lot of energy wasted.

With this in mind, in 1988 I designed and Patented an aerodynamic "nosecone" which fit on the front of these cabover style trucks, below the front windshield and above the front bumper. The nosecone "optimized" the frontal area of the flat front cabover style truck affording a more slipstream shape. I approached Wal Mart with the product in 1989 and they were interested.

The road tests conducted by Wal Mart showed an increase in the fuel efficiency of the test trucks fitted with a nosecone but it was not a large enough fuel savings for Wal Mart to buy the nosecone for their fleet. The Wal Mart representative I worked with told me if Diesel fuel had been at $2.00 a gallon or more they would definitely buy the nosecone for the up front cost of the aerodynamic device would be justified by the amount of money it would save in Diesel fuel cost per vehicle over one years time. That was 20 years ago though and Diesel fuel was $0.87 a gallon. Timing is everything.

Sadly, the aerocap is in a state of inertia now. The camper shell company which had agreed to produce them for me in October of last year has had financial problems, like many other manufacturing companies, thanks to the Wall Street melt down. Maybe someday I will be able to develop a product and have better timing than I did with the nosecone 20 years ago, and now the aerocap.

I do hope our domestic automobile manufacturers will survive so there will continue to be new pickup trucks made to put aerocaps on. I do hope this new administration will provide Government money for developing green technologies and just not talk about it like past administrations. I do hope there is an investigation into the Sub-Prime Mortgage, Credit Default Swap meltdown and that the people who stole from others, like Bernie Madoff, pay for their crimes. Think about how much reasearch and development of green technologies could have been funded by just ONE PERCENT of the $700,000,000,000.00 bailout. What a luxury it would be not having to fund the development of products like the nosecone and aerocap with my own money. But you can bet, I will spend my last dime doing so before I will steal money from others like the Wall Street gang has. Please, accept my apology for venting but I am just little dismayed at the thought we the taxpayers, our children and even their children paying back all the tax money being spent on the TARP bailout.

Bondo