Old & Slow #14
Transportation 3

By Bill Elder

Toward the final years of my time at Chrysler, the company came to embrace the concept of “World Class Manufacturing”. This was a system, originating in Japan, that used basic concepts to achieve goals in safety, environmental concerns, cost reduction and manufacturing quality to name a few. To enroll, inspectors from WCM would arrive at your assembly plant and they would chart your current conditions in all aspects. Over time, further visits would reveal if goals had been achieved through continuous improvements. There were three levels of achievement, Bronze, Silver and Gold status. Windsor Assembly threw itself whole heartedly into achieving the highest ranking that it could, so much so that they developed a tag line “A Family of One”. They even developed a song, written and performed by some very good musicians from the plant. In 2014 Windsor Assembly received a Silver Status, the first assembly plant in North America to achieve this very prestigious award.

Transportation was not considered to be part of the core business of producing cars. Never the less, we dug into the same ideas and concepts. For us, we set our sights on a triple-edged sword of achieving better fuel economy numbers for the trucks that were engaged in highway runs in Ontario, Michigan, Ohio and Indiana. For example, we have daily runs to Kokomo, Ind. for transmissions. So, better fuel economy would be a cost savings, a reduction in a non-renewable resource (oil), and less pollutants in the air. We could not correct driver behaviour, but we could council them on the best driving techniques for fuel savings. Any real fuel economy gains would have to come through improvements in the aerodynamics of the trucks and trailers, chiefly achieved by reducing aerodynamic drag. We equipped the trucks with side wings and overhead deflectors and studied the gap between the trucks and the nose of the trailer to achieve the best efficiency. We also installed side skirts on trailers to keep the air flowing down the side of the trailer. Air getting under the trailer would tangle with the running gear causing aero drag. Here is a bit of irony -- you do everything you can to reduce the wind drag on the nose of the trailer and you then guide the wind along the sides of the trailer to reduce drag, but all of this smooth air then can have an even greater drag on the rear doors of the trailer. To combat the aero drag on the rear doors, we installed a device called Trailer Tails. They are panels attached to the door hinges, along with some bracing, that can be deployed to form a V behind the trailer. As air rushes down the side of the trailer, it follows along the tails and the aero drag is reduced because the air cannot rush around the back doors of the trailer and cause drag.

One area that we recognized as causing aero drag was the area between the truck bumper and the ground. You had a nice aerodynamic nose on the tractor, but air passing under the truck was able to interact with the engine, transmission and differentials to cause considerable drag. We opted to create front air dams for the tractors. If you want to picture these in your mind, think NASCAR front spoilers. We had some aluminum sheeting for trailer roof repairs, but the bulk of the spoiler was made up from rolls of obsolete conveyor belts that we had saved from some self unloader trailers. The good news -- the spoilers gave a 4.5% fuel economy gain. The bad news -- they proved to be too low and got dinged up, especially in winter driving.
All intellectual property that is created on the job belongs to Chrysler. Chrysler moved to obtain a patent on our spoiler devise. The thinking was that the spoilers could be copied by a third party and they could apply for a patent and we would be barred from using our own devise. I do see that all of the modern transport truck manufactures are stating that they achieve better fuel economy through aerodynamic tweaks to their front bumpers. So, not the low hanging devices that we made in house, but the concept and the need is recognized in the industry.