America's 50,000 Moving Trucks Burn Diesel. An Ohio Firm Is Giving Electric a Try

The Columbus, Ohio, outpost of Two Men and a Truck resembles most any family-owned moving and storage franchise. Ensconced on an industrial lot north of downtown, the company does business out of a metal warehouse. Brawny moving guys in matching gray T-shirts come and go. And on the lot outside, there’s a fleet of 40 trucks. Those trucks look a lot alike, too—six-wheeled workhorses with a driver’s cab and a big box on the back. Indeed, you’d have to look closely to pick out the one truck on the lot that’s unique. Here’s a hint: It has no fuel tanks. In a seminal effort, Two Men and a Truck has become one of the first moving companies in the U.S. to test a heavy-duty electric moving truck by actually getting one on the road. “Basically, the goal is to drive this thing for a couple of years, provide some data and feedback, and really prove that it will work in our industry,” franchisee Justin Clarey told Adweek. The significance of Clarey’s field experiment is in the fact that this truck is a serious rig—a 26-foot-long Freightliner class M2, which is essentially one step below a tractor-trailer. While companies like Amazon and Walmart have grabbed headlines by putting electric delivery vehicles in service (Amazon’s first batch of 100,000 electric Rivian trucks hit the road in Los Angeles last year), their “trucks” are essentially light-duty vans. By rolling out a large rig, then, Two Men and a Truck will be addressing many of the obstacles that have kept moving companies from adopting electric trucks as quickly as consumers are with their cars. Bigger costs, bigger headaches Unlike the average family car or SUV, moving trucks weigh more. They carry heavy payloads and also require more battery capacity. Plus, there are longer charge times. Not only do electric trucks cost up to 15% more than their internal-combustion counterparts, they can’t just plug into the standard receptacles that passenger vehicles use. Instead, electric trucks require commercial DC chargers. And those can cost anywhere from $10,000 to $40,000. Range is another issue. According to estimates from moving-software firm EWS, a Class 8 heavy-duty e-truck can run between 150 and 250 miles on a charge. Volvo’s new VNR Electric Class 8 truck that went into production earlier this year advertises a range of up to 275 miles. Even so, if a long-haul moving company is rolling between, say, Seattle and New York, that’s a lot of charging stops along the 2,900-mile route. Moreover, a full charge can take up to four hours—and in the trucking industry, time is money. An SEA Electric power system now sits where the diesel engine used to be. Fortunately for Clarey and his business, the opportunity to test his e-truck came at a lower entry cost. Partnering with nonprofit group Clean Fuels Ohio, Two Men hired W.W. Williams truck repair to retrofit an SEA Electric power system into a vehicle it already owned. “We had a vehicle that had suffered some significant maintenance issues and was going to be costly to repair,” Clarey said. “We felt like this was an opportunity to repurpose, restore an older truck that was on a kind of deathbed, so to speak. And we renewed it by putting electric into it.” Other movers move slowly Clarey’s company isn’t the first mover to express interest in electrifying its fleet. But Two Men appears to have gotten further than most. When Elon Musk unveiled Tesla’s Semi Electric Truck to great fanfare in 2017, at least one moving company—JK Moving Services of Sterling, Virginia—put down a deposit. But Tesla’s delivery dates for the truck have slipped from 2019 to 2020 and, at last check, sometime in 2022. Meanwhile, an Arlington, Massachusetts company called Intelligent Labor Moving & Storage added an electric truck to its fleet in December, though it’s a light-duty truck that’s considerably smaller than the 26-footer that Two Men is operating. Will customers care? One of the less immediate but still pertinent questions in e-truck adoption is whether it will give companies like Two Men any sort of marketing advantage over other movers that are still burning diesel. Clarey thinks it might matter—but only a little. “You’re not going to choose Two Men and a Truck necessarily because they operate electric vehicles," he said. But once customers realize they’re “partnering with a moving company that’s working toward a cleaner, greener, more efficient solution,” Clarey hopes they’ll think: “Well, I’m glad that I’m helping support that cause.” Give it a year Clarey thinks it’ll take at least 12 months of running his e-truck to determine whether the numbers justify thinking about getting a second or third one. “The question marks are, what does it do to the utility costs? And how much savings can you get per year?” he said. “It’s going to be a significant investment to convert or purchase an electric truck at the size that we need it to be. So how quickly you can recoup your investment is really the question.” For the time being, Clarey is grateful for one thing: This one rig won’t be stopping at the pump to fill its tanks. “Obviously, we're not putting diesel fuel into it,” he said “which is saving us $5.50 a gallon right now.”