Like many other liquid food transporters across the country, LTI, Inc., and its dairy-hauling Milky Way fleet, can barely keep up with customer requests.
“We’ve been as busy as we’ve ever been,” said LTI, Inc., president Jason Jansen, who’s been with the Washington state-based company for 32 years this month. “There’s more opportunity than we’ve ever seen.”
Unlike the other guys, LTI, Inc., may be the most efficient bulk carrier in the country.
LTI, Inc., one of the oldest Lynden companies—a family of transportation and logistics companies operating in the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, Hawaii, and Western Canada, among other locations—was the only Tanker Fleet winner to earn a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency SmartWay Excellence Award as a carrier last year.
It’s also the only five-time winner among liquid bulk-focused, for-hire fleets, having secured SmartWay Excellence Awards in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2019, and now 2020. Modern Transportation has won four times (three times in Specialized, once in Tanker, and both in 2015), Eagle Transport has secured Tanker honors three times, and two-time winner Dillon Logistics was the first tank truck carrier to collect the award in 2008.
EPA’s SmartWay Excellence Award recognizes exceptional achievement in freight performance among SmartWay Partners. According to the EPA, Excellence Awardees lead their industries in improving freight efficiency and contributing to cleaner air within their supply chains; and LTI, Inc., certainly fits the bill, consistently scoring in the top 1% of tanker carriers in the nation for low carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide, and particulate matter emissions per ton mile, while operating in extreme weather and carrying the heaviest payloads.
Jansen argues those capacities—LTI, Inc., and Milky Way run approximately 325 tractors and 600 liquid tankers, mostly in sets of two 27-foot trailers capable of reaching 105,500 pounds gross vehicle weight—make their commitment to environmentally friendly operations in the Pacific Northwest all the more compelling.
“EPA looks at your metrics, your CO and CO2 emissions, and emissions per ton mile, and when we started out (2013-15), they credited us for our payload capacity,” Jansen explained. “So you’d compare our weights to trucks that generally haul 80,000 pounds, and look at the emission tons we generated, and it was substantially better, because of our payload size. But eventually they took that away, and changed the formula, so now we’re competing against carriers running at 80,000 gross, and our per-ton mile appears to be lower because we’re not getting credit for the fact that we were hauling 30 to 35% more weight.
“But through our continued efforts, and continued efficiency gains in fuel economy, we’ve started to win that award again.”
And winning is contagious—on the road, and with customers.
“We’re just trying to sustain,” Jansen said. “Growth right now isn’t as much of a focus as trying to take care of the customers and people we have. The biggest thing I always like to emphasize is our people. Lynden overall is very service-oriented, very customer-driven, and we’re able to do that because of our people. So I really like to put the emphasis and focus on them, whether it be our drivers, our mechanics, or our administrative staff. They are what makes our team go, and what sets us apart from our competitors.”
To find out more about how LTI, Inc., continues to distinguish itself among tank truck carriers in transportation efficiency, while serving customers in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and surrounding states, Bulk Transporter recently spoke with Jansen about his fleets’ SmartWay Excellence. Questions and answers are edited for space and clarity.
Bulk Transporter: Why is it important for LTI to pursue this award?
Jason Jansen: “It’s important for all of us to use best practices to reduce emissions, and it’s something that we can all take part in. It’s smart for the environment, but it’s also just a more efficient, more responsible way to operate, in our opinion. I see it as a win-win. It’s a win for the environment, and the customer wins, too, because we’re able to keep costs down. So it’s the responsible way to operate for many, many reasons.”
BT: How has the company gone about achieving more efficient, environmentally friendly tank truck operations?
JJ: “The biggest thing is constantly working to improve our tractor specs. We’ve been able to continue to increase our fuel economy, mostly through the way we spec our tractors, but also through driver training. So I give the majority of the credit to our employees, including our team that is spec’ing and building our equipment. We build our own tankers in house for the milk operation. We also put some driver incentive programs in place to reduce idle times, keep speeds down—all those things that drive fuel economy, and our drivers have responded very well. A lot of them take pride in that. So it really comes down to a team effort, through all of our different departments.”
BT: You build your own tank trailers?
JJ: “Up in Lynden, Wash. (north of Seattle), where our company started, we’ve got a manufacturing facility and we build our own milk tankers. And by doing that, we’re able to constantly innovate, look for weight-saving opportunities, and opportunities to save fuel. So we believe that it’s a real advantage to the work that we do. We use some of those trailers for our juice and wine business, but largely, we build them for our milk operation.”
BT: You mentioned LTI, Inc., equips wide-base, low-rolling resistance tires wherever possible, and tire pressure monitoring systems on those tank trailers. What are some of the ways you’ve made tractors more efficient?
JJ: “We use smaller engines now. So, for the last four or five years we’ve predominantly bought Kenworth (T680 daycabs). When we go out for bids each year, we focus on price, but we also put a value on weight, so if somebody is a little bit more costly but they’re lighter weight, we’ll assign a value to that, to understand what is the benefit. And we decided to run the PACCAR MX-11 (with up to 445 horsepower and 1,700 pound-feet of torque), which is the smaller MX motor, and we’ve done that for weight-saving purposes and fuel economy.”
BT: Are there any drawbacks to downsizing from the MX-13 (with up to 510 hp, 1,850 lb.-ft. of torque) within the regions LTI, Inc., operates?
JJ: “No. They do just fine. You might lose a couple of miles an hour, but on a long trip that’s only a matter of minutes that you lose.”
BT: What about tractor power? Has LTI, Inc., utilized any alternative fuels, or deployed electric vehicles?
JJ: “We’ve studied alternative fuels multiple times, and in most of the lanes we’ve looked at, the infrastructure just wasn’t there. Now, we haven’t studied that topic in the last few years, so it’s possible things may have changed, but currently we’re still running with standard highway diesel.”
BT: What are the company’s fleets achieving as far as miles per gallon?
JJ: “It varies all over the board, depending on the operation, because we’ve got various operations that are so different. Our combined fleet averages close to 6.5 (miles per gallon), but we’ve got trucks that are farm pickup-intensive, so they’ll go out and pick up five loads in a day, and their averages are substantially lower. But then we’ve also got longhaul trucks running into California that often are in the eight to nine (mpg) range.”
BT: Do you use speed limiters?
JJ: “We do limit the tractors, and we use two different speeds. We limit them to 60 miles an hour with the (gas) pedal, and 62 on cruise (control).”
BT: Besides speed limiters, what else is important from a driver perspective in achieving environmental excellence?
JJ: “Driver behavior in general is probably the biggest factor. Then I would say speed, and then you get into equipment spec’ing, and what engines, transmissions, and gearing are you using? Are you running the engine at the right RPMs, and all those kinds of things.”
BT: Do you spec manual, automated manual or fully automatic transmissions?
JJ: “We still use mostly manual, just because of the tanker environments we operate in. When you’re picking up milk at farms, and using dirt roads, sometimes the automated transmissions struggle, especially when you have a lot of sloshing going on. But we do have some automated transmissions on our freight side, the non-milk side of our business, and we add more each year, where we can and where we think they will work. I think as a fleet, they definitely help improve fuel economy. But if you have a really efficient driver with a manual, I don’t think you’ll see much gain.”
BT: How does LTI, Inc., go about changing driver behaviors?
JJ: “We use our own, in-house-built program. We currently use PeopleNet as our on-board system for gathering truck data, and we created our own scorecard and incentive program. We also pay hourly, on most everything we do, because we’re trying to promote safety and consistency, and we don’t want drivers in a hurry trying to get a bunch of miles under their belt in a day. So we manage time that way, and look to do it in a consistent and safe manner, each and every time out. And so, through our PeopleNet equipment, we’re able to get engine RPMs and road speeds, and hard acceleration and deceleration, and we created our own program we use to score drivers, and to build in incentives. And about 80% of our people achieve the full incentive on a consistent basis. It’s helped reduce our idle times, and we used to constantly have to coach and talk about those things, but we don’t do a lot of that anymore. The drivers manage it themselves because of the reward.”
BT: Does is take a significant investment to excel in the SmartWay Excellence program, or can you ease into it, and eventually hit these high marks?
JJ: “It has to be a progressive thing over time because there’s only so much that we can manage at once. The government mandates how these manufacturers are going to build the trucks, and the things that they’re going to comply with. And those are items that we can’t control. What we can control is how we manage and operate those trucks, our payload capabilities, and the innovations we build into our trailers. So it’s something that’s always evolving. And we’re always looking for ways to do it better and improve.”
BT: Do you see emissions regulations continuing to grow stricter, especially given the current climate in Washington D.C.?
JJ: “Well, I don’t have any specifics. But I would say, yeah, we’re going to continue to see more and more regulation in our industry.”
