Westport 15L Cancellation Takes Center Stage at Natural Gas Conference

Westport 15L Cancellation Takes Center Stage at Natural Gas Conference
By Today's Trucking Staff, Posted: Oct 2, 2013 12:40 AM | Last Updated: Oct 3, 2013 08:26 AM

TORONTO — Rumors that Westport Innovations was cancelling production of its 15L LNG engine were given wide exposure at the 1st Annual Natural Gas Vehicle Canada Conference yesterday.

During a presentation on Bison's recent foray into the natural gas-powered tractor market, Trevor Fridfinnson, senior vice president with Bison Transport, told the audience that when it comes to the need for NG technology to progress, "One particular development that may not be comfortable, depending on how it plays out, is Westport Innovations deciding not to supply engines any more, [and transferring] that responsibility and that skill over to the OEMs."

Bison's LNG tractors — Model 386 Peterbilts — are using the Westport 15L to pull their LCVs between Edmonton and Calgary.

"The biggest concern is that there is going to be a gap between that high upper-end piece [and smaller-displacement NG engines]," he said in answer to an audience question regarding the 15L disappearing from the market, "but there may be people at this conference that have more perspective."

Like Westport.

So far, however, the company has been mum on the issue, and has denied the rumor. Transport Routier editor Steve Bouchard and Today's Trucking associate editor Jason Rhyno contacted Westport two weeks ago regarding the rumors.

During that interview, Nicole Adams, director of communications at Westport Innovations, denied that the company was halting production of its 15L LNG engine. "It’s the first time that we've heard the rumor," she said to Today’s Trucking and Transport Routier. “We will produce the 15L as long as there will be a demand for it."

However, subsequent conversations between Today's Trucking editors and industry insiders who wished to remain off the record, confirmed the rumor.

During the interview, Adams confirmed that Westport will share its HPDI (high-pressure direct injection) technology with some vertically integrated engine OEMs.

"Ultimately, I think that's the direction we'd like to go," she said when asked about vertically integrating with the OEMs, "but at the moment, we're still assembling them [15L LNG engines] at our facility in Vancouver."

Pressed further on the root of the rumor, Adams said "We have so much on the go right now, that it's confusing for people with the 12L and the development program with Volvo."

Transport Robert's Engineering Manager Yves Maurais also touched upon the issue during his presentation. "We're looking for other products from OEMs, and now hopefully with Westport working closer with OEMs maybe we'll see some new products offered. But what's going to happen in the gap is yet to be seen."

What was certain today, however, is that the Canadian trucking industry — both carriers and suppliers alike — is not confused about the cancellation. "Oh, yeah, that's old news," commented one attendee to Today's Trucking.

Still, for early LNG adopters like Bison, "It's certainly a concern that was not necessarily anticipated," summed up Fridfinnson.

Westport was contacted again in light of today's events, but has yet to respond.

More as it develops.

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Trucking Company Owner Operator Lease Survey in Final Stage

truck owner operator

In order to create current and updated data concerning company truck lease options, we began our owner operator lease purchase program survey on November 9th, 2009.  Before the recent recession, studies showed that these programs resulted in an 87% failure rate for truck drivers, a statistic that I first began to publicize nearly five years ago.

As truckers were hit hard by the recession, the job-hopping that was so common in trucking before, eased up due to the economic turmoil and we saw this rate fall to 57% as reported in our survey update in April, 2010.

As of April 3rd, 2010 we had received 1,711 responses to the survey, resulting in the fifty seven percent stat.  As of this writing, the survey has pulled in 3,486 responses and I will be bringing this survey to a close on February 3rd, 2011.  It will take me a few months to sort through all the data and post the final results.

Trucking secrets are no longer insider information, thanks to the power of trucking social media.  Although there are company lease drivers who have done well with these lease programs, the majority of these trucking company lease purchase programs are designed for the driver to fail.  The 87% failure rate study was reported several years ago by an independent accountant but I wanted to bring this issue to an updated level, thus the reason for our survey.

If you have been involved with a trucking company lease purchase plan or know someone who has and have not taken the survey, you can do so by February 3rd, 2011.  Whether the result was positive or negative, we would like to get as many responses as possible before the survey closes.

With nearly 3,500 responses to date, I feel that this is a decent number to provide a more updated statistic on what is widely known among veteran truck drivers as being one of the biggest scams in trucking.

We will let you know the final results of our trucking company owner operator lease purchase program survey once all data has been reviewed.

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