Waste and Recycling Fleet Technology

Choosing alternative fueling options for heavy-duty vehicles has become quite complex, due in part to a patchwork of overlapping regulations. WasteExpo 2024 showed that the industry can expect to see an increasing number of choices, as well as a split among certain major companies in terms of their investment plans.

While compressed natural gas remains the industry’s most popular alternative to diesel, battery electric vehicles also featured prominently at the event. The show also saw the debut of a hydrogen fuel cell truck. These newer options are still considered to be in their earlier stages.

Discussions throughout the conference’s investor summit and other sessions centered around common themes such as range, cost and availability of charging or fueling infrastructure. Such discussions aren’t new at WasteExpo, and the 2023 event featured plenty of opinions about zero-emission vehicle production and usage requirements under California rules. These requirements will ultimately require waste companies to use zero-emission vehicles by 2042, with multiple other states also moving toward requirements on varied timelines.

The event happened in the wake of the U.S. EPA finalizing its own rules requiring manufacturers of heavy-duty fleets to reduce emissions in new models starting in 2027 and continually improve on those reductions by 2032. The enforcement timing of these rules may be affected by multiple lawsuits, but original equipment manufacturers and waste companies said they’re moving ahead anyway.

Volvo’s Mack Trucks, for example, has a target to sell 35% zero-emission vehicles by 2030. Jonathan Randall, president of Mack Trucks North America, said his company’s new and upcoming diesel engines are “incredibly clean,” but the future appears to be in EVs. More than 50 authorized Mack dealers have already been certified to work on electric vehicles, with more coming, and Peterbilt is seeing a similar trend driven by regulatory requirements.

“It’s not just a California thing. There's five more states in 2025, there's more states in 2026 and then in 2027 electric vehicles are gonna be a reality for all 50 states,”said Jason Skoog, general manager at Peterbilt and vice president of PACCAR. “So every one of our dealers sees it ... and they're not gonna miss out."

Figuring out the right application in each market may be complicated, leading many speakers to say it won’t be a one-size-fits all approach. Recology, which has reported notable strides in reducing its own fleet emissions, advised others to keep an open mind and be patient as technology evolves.

"The real goal is to be able to line up any of the alternate fuel types that may be available ... and have that perform just like any other diesel truck,” said Jim Mendoza, the company’s director of equipment procurement and maintenance. "We'd love to see that same performance out of a diesel vehicle as you would with electric or CNG or hydrogen, but there's going to be a little give and take here.”

Scaling battery electric vehicles

Battery electric vehicles are gaining broad popularity, as shown in the 2024 State of Sustainable Fleets report shared at the ACT Expo. It noted that orders for electric buses, trucks and vans doubled between 2022 and 2023. But usage for heavy-duty refuse applications is still in the earlier stages. 

James Johnson, president of Autocar, said it has taken a long time to perfect CNG and he doesn’t think EVs are there yet for waste applications. His company built a hydraulic hybrid nearly 20 years ago, but it was expensive and had limited capabilities, and he feels current versions are still more for show.

"We have the tendency to call them parade trucks ... because that's really what they've been doing, parading around,” he said, citing questions about infrastructure and maintenance.

Mack had a different view, noting multiple customers were currently running EVs around the country.

"We're beyond the, ‘I'm buying this for a PR play,’” said Randall. “Fleets are now recognizing that this is coming and they need to figure out how it's going to work for their operation.”

Aside from cost, one of the biggest themes that came up throughout the event was how range compares between EVs and diesel or CNG vehicles.

“Range anxiety is one of the biggest challenges ... and I use that word ‘anxiety’ because it truly is that way,” said Kelleigh Ash, chief technology officer for Battle Motors. “Obviously it depends on the use case, but in most instances one of our smaller battery pack sizes will absolutely meet that range and so one of the challenges is proving that.”

Battle, which has grown since acquiring Crane Carrier in 2021, offers multiple battery pack sizes and has a patented enclosure system which Ash said can help handle unique weight distribution challenges. The company also manufactures CNG and diesel vehicles, but sees big growth opportunities in EVs.

Ash said some customers adjust their operating schedules to account for charging time, in some cases moving to staggered shifts of eight to 10 hours to allow for an estimated four-hour charging window. This landscape will continue to evolve as battery technology changes “rapidly,” she said, with incrementally more powerful versions expected to hit the market in the next few years.

Randall said that for many customers the goal is to be able to run a full route in 10 hours on one charge, which for some could entail 125 miles and 1,200 pickups, but for the most part “we’re not there yet.” He said there are cases where there this is happening, but it all depends on the use case. For example, urban markets with denser and shorter routes will likely be a better fit to start.

“When you look at battery electric, you can't just look at it in terms of buying a truck or buying an asset. You've got to look at it in terms of the entire ecosystem and everything that goes with it,” he said. “You got to understand the routes and which routes make the most sense.”

WM CEO Jim Fish cited range and weight as key barriers to his company making any significant investment in EVs beyond small-scale pilots, also citing the 125-mile threshold.

“I'm not opposed to electric in any way, shape, or form, but we don't have the infrastructure at this point and we don't have a viable vehicle for us,” he said.

Republic Services, on the other hand, is betting big on EVs. The company currently has 15 vehicles on the road and expects to reach 50 by the end of 2024.

"The trucks that we have running right now we're really confident that we're going to be buying at scale,” said CEO Jon Vander Ark. He said the company made “mistakes” along the way as part of being an early mover in the space, but now understands “it’s not a truck, it’s a system” and is prepared to move at scale. Earlier this month, certain area presidents and local leaders attended a demo in Phoenix to learn more about the vehicles.

“This year alone, we're going to invest $100 million between EV trucks and infrastructure,” said CFO Brian DelGhiaccio. “You can imagine the upside when you start thinking about growth, as we realize those benefits in lower energy costs and reduced maintenance costs.”

A dedicated team has been pursuing local, state and federal incentives for multiple years to help offset costs. They’ve also mapped out how factors such as topography, weather and distance will affect charging and performance needs for all of the company’s routes.

“Over 90% of the utilities we've gone to to claim power we've gotten it, and the early bird gets the worm in those cases,” said Vander Ark.

Waste Connections CEO Ron Mittelstaedt said his company was piloting EV vehicles in three markets, with better use cases in areas that require less driving such as New York City. He said the trucks are “not quite ready for prime time yet,” citing similar factors about range and limited charging infrastructure.

“EV will get there, but it's not around the corner,” he said. When asked to predict where the industry would be in 15 years, Mittelstaedt estimated that a “large percentage” of the fleet could be some combination of electric, hybrid or hydrogen.

High hopes for hydrogen

Recology said it’s heartened by the improvements in EV technology, but also has its sights set on other possibilities.

"The performance of the battery electric has drastically changed from where it was just a few years ago,” said Mendoza, adding that “we're very excited to see what happens with the hydrogen fuel cell." 

During the event, New Way and Hyzon debuted what they say is North America’s first electric refuse truck powered by hydrogen fuel cells. Recology will demo the truck, which Hyzon anticipates could be commercially available in late 2025.

"Our biggest advantage is power density. We have the most power dense fuel cell available,” said Steven Boyer, vice president of commercial at Hyzon.

Boyer said hydrogen fuel cell-powered vehicles have lower weight than electric, perform well in cold weather, refuel in a similar amount of time as diesel and have a longer operating range, and offer a similar user experience to CNG. He noted that the federal government plans to invest billions in hydrogen fueling hubs around the country, with similar networks also growing in Canada and California. Pilots are also underway to create hydrogen from landfill gas, through companies such as Hyzon’s partner Raven SR, but the infrastructure is still nascent.

“Right now, hydrogen is expensive,” said Boyer, citing prices of around $30 to $34 per kilogram at certain stations in California. He anticipates that could drop to around $15 per kilogram by the end of 2024, making it more comparable to diesel, and said further decreases will help offset the total cost of ownership.

“When we get to ‘26 and ‘27, we expect to see hydrogen prices in the single digits. And when we get to the single digits that's when the TCO becomes equal to what we see right now,” he said.

Boyer also said that fleets currently using CNG would have a similar maintenance experience with hydrogen after making certain updates such as adding hydrogen sensors. He also cited existing tests on the road, including with Performance Food Group in California.

CNG still growing

In the meantime, CNG remains a popular option. The Sustainable Fleets report noted that refuse vehicles led new orders for the category in 2023, accounting for 33% of all Class-8 purchases, and the sector is expected to resist a broader decline in popularity for this option.

“Use of natural gas in refuse and goods movement sectors is likely to persist thanks to their strong fit and performance in services that are otherwise challenging to electrify,” said the report.

WM runs an estimated 61% of its collection fleet on CNG and plans to expand that. Waste Connections said it’s currently around 25% and may see nominal increases. GFL Environmental is now around 18% and plans to reach 50%; but like others, the company doesn’t view rural markets as being cost-effective to convert.

Hexagon Agility, a company that makes CNG tanks for vehicles — including in the refuse market — said this market has grown over many decades and has further runway ahead.

“We still see a long bridge for CNG, natural gas in general,” said Craig Kerkman, market segment manager for refuse. “We don't see it going away any time soon."

Kerkman said the capability to project stable CNG fuel costs is a “big deal” for fleet operators, with the potential to see pricing below retail if waste companies have fueling infrastructure on site. The Sustainable Fleets report said that in 2023 retail prices for CNG were 50% less expensive than diesel.

Local governments are increasingly asking for CNG fleets in their collection contracts, though major cities such as New York and Los Angeles are eyeing zero-emission fleet goals in the future and certain states will eventually require the same. In the meantime, Kerkman said Hexagon remains “bullish” on CNG, but is also working on its own EV and hydrogen applications.

With all of these options in play, fleet equipment manufacturers and operators throughout WasteExpo echoed the importance of taking a multipronged approach.

“There's going to be a variety of zero-emission technologies that are going to be available. A battery electric vehicle happens to be the first one today,” said Skoog.

Disclosure: WasteExpo is run by Informa, the owner of Waste Dive’s publisher, Industry Dive. Informa has no influence over Waste Dive’s coverage.

An electric vehicle charging pilot by one of the world’s largest waste companies could chart a new course for the industry as operators look to electrify their fleets.

Electrification is increasingly seen as the future for waste vehicles, based on corporate pledges and requests from municipal customers, but costs and charging infrastructure are still evolving.

France-based Veolia recently completed what it described as the world's first trial of bidirectional charging for waste collection vehicles, which could have implications for fleets in other areas. According to Phillippe Queruau, electrification services manager for Veolia UK, waste collection fleets are uniquely situated to take advantage of vehicle to grid (V2G) charging technology.

Queruau said studies of the fully electric collection fleet that Veolia operates for London’s Westminster Borough, powered by one of the company’s waste-to-energy facilities, revealed some of the reasons. They run consistent predictable routes within a reasonable range of their home base, and when they return to the depot their batteries generally still hold 50% of their charge. 

During the evenings, after completing their routes, the trucks sit quietly parked as he said most of London “puts the kettle on and the grid enters peak demand.” The UK's power grid offers tiered subsidies so Queruau said the excess energy stored in these idle batteries would have value if it could be drawn upon to provide electricity to offices, offsetting some of the expense of peak power prices. 

After Veolia spent several years completing the conversion of its Westminster collection fleet to electric vehicles, some of the trucks were starting to near the end of their service life. Veolia selected two of these trucks for upgrades, refitting them to the newest Combined Charging System standards and equipping them for bidirectional charging.

The company entered these vehicles in a trial to assess the technology, which involved testing them on the road, charging and discharging the batteries, and sending power back into a building on site. The company reported delivering 110 kW of energy back to the grid.

Veolia worked with Magtech, an electric power train and systems manufacturer, to upgrade the vehicles. Andrew Sloan, engineering director for Magtech, said bidirectional charging has evolved in recent years. It's now used frequently in the UK for private vehicles and fleets of smaller vehicles, and is at the point where it doesn't take a revolution in technology to apply it for new uses.

According to Sloan, the key to scaling this further is about more than just technology. Applying two-way charging broadly for waste collection fleets will require nurturing new relationships and coordination between a constellation of dedicated partners. These potential partners include manufacturers of vehicles and charging systems, control software developers, electric service providers, and waste collection management and staff.

To prepare Veolia’s two vehicles for the test, Magtech upgraded their CCS 2 equipment, as well as the high voltage direct current wiring and batteries. The company also provided onboard software support for the vehicles and for the CCS controller, which enabled the V2G capability.

Turbo Power Systems supplied the off-board charger and developed the software to define the controls to export power from the vehicles. The system requires an off-vehicle charger that is capable of bidirectional operation to take that DC power and convert it to three-phase and put it back into the grid.

“The advantage to off-boarding DC is that it's really easy,” said Sloan, noting that the batteries are already discharging at a high rate when the vehicle is in operation. He described the task of extracting this current from the charging connector as “very simple from a hardware point of view.”

According to Sloan, CCS 2 enables faster charging. When accompanied by the appropriate software, this facilitates charge tracking and discharge cycles that can change due to grid demand and fluctuations in power prices. This capability was demonstrated during the study, with the collection vehicles providing electricity to the building where they were parked during their discharge cycles and successfully recharging during charging cycles. 

EVs expand in the US waste industry

The U.S. waste industry hasn’t seen as much progress on bidirectional charging infrastructure, but manufacturers like Mack Trucks are making moves to scale up the use of electric collection vehicles. Customers such as New York City’s Department of Sanitation and WIN Waste Innovations are among the latest examples of fleet operators looking to replace diesel or natural gas-powered vehicles with electric alternatives.

Scott Barraclough, senior product manager for e-mobility at Mack, said DSNY saw this as “a way to reduce the carbon footprint of the department,” while noting other benefits. “Fueling a truck with electricity rather than diesel or natural gas can provide a cost savings.”

Aside from their zero-emission profile, Barraclough said Mack's LR Electric trucks are functionally identical to its widely deployed LR Diesel and natural gas models. He said they can be “a good match for many routes,” but also require upfront work.

“You can't just take a diesel truck off of a route and put an electric vehicle in its place. We need to work with the customers to examine the route to make sure electric is a good fit for that route. Range is a concern, along with charging infrastructure,” he said. “Building the truck might be the easy part, the charging infrastructure is equally important because a truck with no charger is a down truck.” 

Additional considerations include training drivers on how to use regenerative braking, which can extend a vehicle’s battery range. 

Customers may also need to work with their utility company to prepare. Mack has options to support haulers who want to make the electric shift, including service, parts, financing and facilitating charging infrastructure. Barraclough also recognized that cost can be a factor and noted the availability of grants and “incentive money out there for municipalities,” some of which “can make the move to electric fairly comparable to diesel.”

WIN Waste is another company experimenting with the switch to electric at one of its facilities in Massachusetts. In an ongoing pilot study, launched in November 2023, the company is charging two Mack LRs at a mass burn combustion facility in Saugus before they run their routes in Boston. Similar to what Veolia is doing in London, which the company describes as a “perfect circular loop,” the waste that WIN collects goes into its facility and creates electricity to charge the vehicles.”

Chief Operating Officer Marieke Curley said via email that this pilot offers a unique local opportunity while also fitting into the company’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving air quality. It was supported in part by state and federal grant funding.

“The Saugus facility’s proximity to the City of Boston helps to maximize the performance of the batteries while serving as many customers as possible. This renewable electricity generation allows us to create a circular economic model with our EV program,” she said.

Looking ahead

As electric vehicles continue to become more common in the U.S. waste industry, with states such as California requiring them in the coming years, charging infrastructure and vehicle performance will be important areas to watch.

WIN said it’s still too early in the pilot project to fully evaluate the feasibility, but early results are promising.

“Perhaps the greatest milestone so far has been the excitement among our customers to offer a service that can so clearly advance their sustainability goals with no extra effort on their part,” said Curley.

Andrew Meintz, chief engineer for electric vehicle charging and grid integration at the National Renewable Energy Lab, said one of the challenges facing widespread adoption of V2G technology in the U.S. is getting everybody in the room to agree on standards for connection and communication. 

Sloan believes these standards in communications and controller logic will eventually crystallize around the methods and products of market leaders. Both Magtech, Mack and others say they plan to continue focusing on this area as charging technology develops.

In waste collection, as standards develop and “the technology improves, the number of routes where it's appropriate to use electric vehicles will expand, until electric becomes the norm rather than the exception,” said Barraclough.

For Veolia, the next phase in its V2G trial will commence later this year. The company will test V2G-equipped trucks running actual collection routes and performing their customary duties. Queruau believes these trials will prove the economic model, demonstrate conclusively that bidirectional charging does not reduce the lifetime performance of the battery and help prove that “it can all be done without interfering in the core service of waste collection.”

The U.S. EPA released the final version of rules for its Renewable Fuel Standard program without the inclusion of a new program that would have boosted funding for renewable electricity generation but with better credit volumes for biogas. The rules deliver value to the waste industry while holding back on implementing a major addition to the RFS.

The updated rules set the volume of credits that renewable fuel manufacturers could sell to refiners and importers of petroleum-based fuels for 2023, 2024 and 2025. In determining targets for renewable natural gas, the EPA looked at the RNG industry’s growth since 2015 to get a sense of pre-pandemic norms. The agency boosted its projections as a result.

“Today’s final rule reflects our efforts to ensure stability of the program for years to come, protect consumers from high fuel costs, strengthen the rural economy, support domestic production of cleaner fuels, and help reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a statement.

The new RFS rules were published following a lawsuit from biofuel trade association Growth Energy. The deadline was originally set to June 14, 2023, but was delayed by a week following a last-minute agreement between Growth Energy and EPA.

The consent decree reached by Growth Energy ensured the EPA, in conjunction with the Department of Energy and Department of Agriculture, would set volume targets for multiple years for the first time since the RFS was created in 2005, bringing more certainty to the program and renewable identification number, or RIN, credit values.

The credits are an attractive source of revenue to producers of a range of renewable fuels, including biogas. The final rule settled on a higher rate of growth in the number of RINs for cellulosic biofuels used for RNG than previously proposed, a change the waste industry had urged. The EPA now projects that RNG volumes will increase 25% year-over-year rather than 13.1% as it initially projected. The higher RIN generation targets provide greater revenue opportunity to producers of biogas, which includes landfills and anaerobic digesters. 

Credits for generating renewable electricity, called eRINs in the EPA's initial proposal, would have offered a substantial new source of revenue for biogas producers in the waste industry, many of which generate electricity and not renewable natural gas. The American Biogas Council recently estimated that the vast majority — about 2,000 — of the 2,300 operating biogas collection systems in the U.S. produce electricity, while a smaller but growing number produce RNG. 

Many landfill operators still use methane gas from their facilities to generate electricity on-site, but the potential to receive credits through further refining of biogas into RNG had caused some companies to consider upgrades. For instance, WM, which is investing more than $1.2 billion in upgrading its RNG infrastructure, projected during an investor call in April 2023 that it could generate more than $70 million through the eRIN market if it was created. While eRINs would be a fraction of the company’s overall revenue expectations, executives said they could shift RNG plans at certain sites based on the program’s implementation or lack thereof.

eRINs also could have given waste companies a piece of the regulatory market as fleets transitioned to battery-electric vehicles through the generation of electricity through biogas. In its explanation for delaying implementation of the eRIN program, EPA said that it would “continue to work on potential paths forward," citing strong stakeholder interest but concerns from environmental justice advocates. Some Republicans had also argued that the creation of an entirely new credit market through the RFS would go beyond EPA's statutory abilities under the Clean Air Act, and urged the agency to abandon the proposal in April.

Meanwhile, some Democrats in states with WTE facilities had joined private companies in urging the EPA to add such facilities to the RFS rules, as they generate biogas that can be used for fueling or electricity. That provision was not included, but EPA indicated it was still interested in clarifying the definition of renewable biomass following further review, which could include WTE. 

The final rule also allowed biogas to be used as an intermediate to produce renewable fuels beyond RNG. In its explanation, EPA said the decision would support the market for harvesting and using biogas from additional landfills, anaerobic digesters and other sources without relying on the limited end use of compressed natural gas or liquefied natural gas vehicles.

The California Air Resources Board’s adoption of the Advanced Clean Fleets rule has put the squeeze on waste haulers who are now on a timeline to buy 100% zero-emission vehicles by 2042.

The haulers are racing for solutions at a time when manufacturers are only just beginning to scale up production of trucks capable of meeting demand. But as orders for battery-electric refuse trucks begin to roll in, many remain concerned about charging infrastructure and the technological advancement necessary to meet the new regulatory deadlines.

“Innovation's hard and it's not a straight line,” Republic Services CEO Jon Vander Ark said at WasteExpo’s 2023 investor summit. “There are going to be fits and starts and bumps and bruises.”

The timeline approved by CARB on April 28, 2023, would require waste and wastewater fleets that previously ran on compressed natural gas to be 10% zero-emission by 2030 and 100% zero-emission by 2042. The timeline is later than for certain other types of fleets, which WM and other members of the waste industry lobbied for because of the investments they made in CNG fleets and infrastructure. Diesel fleets will be gradually phased out as part of the transition.

The rule has been viewed as aggressive by truck fleet operators but necessary by environmentalists and CARB, which noted in its release that trucks account for 25% of California’s on-road greenhouse gas emissions despite comprising 6% of vehicles.

Groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council applauded the move, which was passed at the same time as another emissions-cutting regulation for railroads, as a step forward in decarbonizing transportation.

"This regulation will help drive the transition to cleaner, zero-emission trucks, create good jobs, and reduce pollution from the transportation sector, which is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the state," Guillermo Ortiz, a clean vehicle advocate at the NRDC, said in a statement.

But at WasteExpo, executives with major haulers said the technology of battery-electric trucks is still struggling to meet all of their fleets’ demands.

Ron Mittelstaedt, the CEO of Waste Connections, said the electric models he’d seen were twice as expensive, could haul less than 60% of the payload and travel less than 25-30% of the operating distance compared with CNG or diesel trucks.

“When you're talking about those differences, the cost effective percentage is 20-22% of CNG or diesel vehicles,” Mittelstaedt said during the investor summit. “I don't see that that's going to be ready for primetime in a competitive market like Denver or Chicago or Houston anytime soon.”

‘The infrastructure question’

The biggest concern for many companies is new charging infrastructure, something that has caught the attention of both California and the federal government as an urgent need to achieve the nation’s electrification goals.

“The question that needs to get answered is the infrastructure question,” WM Chief Operating Officer John Morris said in an interview. “Having a reliable source to be able to fuel those trucks everyday is something we need to figure out.”

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory identified 166 total charging stations for heavy-duty fleets nationwide in the third quarter of 2022, 101 of which were Level 2 chargers powerful enough to provide 25 miles of range after an hour of charging and 65 of which were DC chargers powerful enough to 100-plus miles of range after 30 minutes of charging.

But where waste haulers are using (and charging) electric trucks, they have yet to do so at scale, said Tim Thornton, vice president and general manager of refuse for Autocar Trucks.

“Some customers are building infrastructure, but they’re not doing it for an entire fleet,” Thornton said.

Republic is one hauler proactively acquiring electric trucks. Vander Ark said the hauler has about 20 zero-emission trucks on the streets and hopes to have 50 in 2024. Republic typically purchases roughly 1,100 trucks per year. Vander Ark said he’s aiming to make up to 300 of those battery-electric by 2025 and more than half battery-electric by 2028.

Those investments will require additional back-end work with utilities to bring the necessary infrastructure online. Vander Ark said the hauler is spending some of its own money to build out charging infrastructure and has eight sites with “shovels in the ground” to build the electrical capacity.

“You can't give every site 200 trucks,” Vander Ark said. “We have a balance of filtering those in, so we kind of start off with 20 locations and then scale up from there.”

California currently accounts for a third of all charging stations in the nation, though the East Coast has recently seen a rapid ramp-up in new charging infrastructure, according to NREL. Vander Ark expects the rollout of Republic’s electric refuse vehicles will follow a similar pattern, meeting the demands of California before shifting to other sites on the East Coast and later filtering into middle America, possibly supplemented by hydrogen fuel cell when the technology becomes available. 

But smaller haulers face much greater challenges building out infrastructure, said Veronica Pardo, regulatory affairs director for the Resource Recovery Coalition of California. Those haulers will rely on state and federal funding to finance charging infrastructure and the busy utilities tasked with ramping up electrification for all sectors, not just the waste industry.

“When we talk about Republic, they’ve got the ability to make investments at a larger scale than your smaller fleets,” Pardo said. “When it comes to your smaller fleets, essentially they’re going to have to work with local jurisdictions and communities and work on the rate structure that is going to support the infrastructure that is necessary.”

The California Energy Commission expects to spend nearly $2 billion on electric charging infrastructure for medium- and heavy-duty vehicles between 2021 and 2026, and so far has spent about $950 million, according to a spokesperson.

Not all of that funding goes to the waste industry. The CEC noted the EnergIIZE commercial vehicles block grant program has $183 million available and the Innovative Charging Solutions for Medium- and Heavy-Duty Electric Vehicles program will have $20 million available. Refuse haulers would qualify for those programs, but they would be competing against fleets from other industries.

Besides funding challenges, Pardo said some of the haulers her organization represents have heard of yearslong delays from utilities to get charging infrastructure built, in part due to a backlog of new projects.

CARB acknowledged the challenge in its final rule, allowing operators to request an up to five-year extension in implementing the zero-emission rule if they’re experiencing infrastructure delays. But the rule as written wouldn’t allow those haulers to buy new trucks in the interim, essentially leaving aging vehicles in place rather than replacing them with the next best technology, like CNG, Pardo said.

Meanwhile, vehicle manufacturers need to comply with the Advanced Clean Trucks rule, which similarly ramps up the percentage of zero-emission trucks they must sell in the state of California through 2039. That could leave haulers in an awkward position where they’re stuck with stranded trucks that can’t be replaced as implementation continues, Pardo said.

“The manufacturers themselves have the quotas that they need to meet, so they may very well tell California fleets: ‘I’m sorry, we can't deliver this truck to you,’” Pardo said. “They’re selling them in other states, happily, but in California, they’re telling other states we can’t sell this to you.”

Technological constraints

While pilots are taking off, truck manufacturers present at WasteExpo acknowledged battery-electric vehicles couldn’t yet compete with the capabilities of a CNG or diesel truck. That problem is particularly acute for vehicle range, as vehicles are challenged by heavy payloads, uneven terrain and difficult weather.

“The future isn’t really here yet all the way, so we’ve got a collision course coming,” Jimmy Johnston, president of Autocar Trucks, said in an interview. “We’ve always got to be realistic about the timing.”

Several manufacturers have begun piloting or ramping up production of battery-electric refuse trucks as cities increasingly write EV pilot requirements into their waste hauling contracts. Mack Trucks has been partnering with the New York Department of Sanitation to pilot its LR Electric truck since 2020, and recently received an order for seven more from the city agency.

Meanwhile, manufacturers Autocar and Heil have begun to demo their own Class 8 truck with WM and McNeilus — owned by Oshkosh — has signed on to a long-term deal with Republic Services to pilot and scale up orders of its fully integrated electric refuse collection vehicle. 

Michael Eastabrook, president and CEO of truck manufacturer Labrie Enviroquip Group, said he anticipates battery-electric trucks will become more common but issues like charging infrastructure will prevent the fueling type from supplanting CNG and diesel completely.

“It's a much more nuanced conversation that needs to be had than our current political environment allows us to have,” Eastabrook said at the investor summit. “They're going to hit a wall at some point if the only route we're going down is EVs, the infrastructure's not going to support it.”

Vander Ark noted that the vehicles Republic is piloting today can reach ranges just under 100 miles, long enough for certain routes but unlikely to meet the demands of more rural communities.

Other haulers have touted longer ranges under ideal conditions, but some have been hesitant to pin a firm number on the charge, as conditions like snow can change the life of a battery. WIN Waste Innovations expects to pilot two electric rear-loader trucks of its own in the Boston area, and CEO Robert Boucher in August said the trucks, which would run on energy generated by WIN’s waste-to-energy plants, could get a six to seven hour range. 

Casella Waste Systems is also partnering with Mack to pilot its LR Electric truck in Vermont, in part thanks to state grants. John Casella, founder and CEO of the company, said it was also partnering with Battle Motors, but he believes he’ll need to be selective about which markets get the trucks first.

“It's exciting tech. We're going to continue to pilot it, we're going to continue to help drive it ... but it's got a ways to go in terms of being effective especially in our area in that we're really looking at mountains, the hills,” Casella said.

Supply chain issues also remain a concern for haulers and manufacturers. Patrick Carroll, president of Environmental Solutions Group, said the timeline for delivery of electric vehicles is currently slower than internal combustion engine vehicles. He said that delay has been reduced by months since 2022, and new battery manufacturers expected to come online in the U.S. in 2023 could further reduce that lag time. “We do see things starting to get better,” he noted.

Manufacturers typically need multiple years to reach peak production of their electric vehicle models. Once they do, however, they’ll find ready demand from haulers eager to meet new restrictions — 15 states plus the District of Columbia have signed onto a memorandum of understanding to transition medium and heavy duty trucks to zero-emission by 2050, and funding continues to pour into electrification via programs from the Inflation Reduction Act, among others.

What’s more, a rising number of states are directly adopting California’s Advanced Clean Trucks rule, indicating a sea change in EV production and adoption is well underway.

“The anticipation is that the early years will be more difficult, and after that post-2030, we’re going to be rolling,” Pardo said. “That’s the idea, anyways.”

Disclosure: WasteExpo is run by Informa, the owner of Waste Dive's publisher, Industry Dive. Informa has no influence over Waste Dive's coverage.

Incentives for fleet electrification, including those in 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act, could meaningfully encourage the adoption of heavy-duty electric vehicles — to the degree that battery electric vehicles could be 63% of refuse truck sales come 2030. That’s according to a white paper from the International Council on Clean Transportation and Energy Innovation that analyzes the impact of the Inflation Reduction Act on EV uptake in the U.S.

That potential market share is among the largest for segments ICCT looked at, which included transit buses, school buses, delivery trucks and long-haul tractor trailers, said Ray Minjares, heavy-duty vehicles program director at ICCT.

It would follow battery electric refuse trucks reaching cost parity with diesel refuse trucks as soon as 2026 and fuel-cell electric refuse trucks achieving diesel parity in 2033. 

“Even accounting for the incentives that the IRA gives towards hydrogen, we don't expect it to have any more than 1% share of the [zero-emission vehicle] sales of the refuse truck market,” Minjares said. ”We expect that battery electric trucks will dominate significantly, if not outright, zero-emission sales in the future in this market.”

To reach those estimates, the report authors looked at factors such as the changing costs to manufacturers producing vehicle components as well as consumer sentiment.

Another influence will be the growing number of states (including Oregon, Washington, New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts) enacting California’s Advanced Clean Trucks rule in the coming years, which in part requires heavy-duty vehicle manufacturers to sell a certain percentage of zero-emission vehicles.

Going forward, ICCT and its partners will monitor the price and sales of electric trucks as they enter the market, how the Inflation Reduction Act helps fleets with the deployment of charging infrastructure, and how utilities and the U.S. EPA play a role in advancing infrastructure and greenhouse gas standards. Ultimately, lowering emissions from heavy-duty vehicles will be critical to meeting goals laid out in the Paris climate agreement, Minjares said.

Minjares acknowledged that fleet operators have to make the purchasing decision for themselves, factoring in charging infrastructure timelines and total cost of ownership. But overall, “I think this study shows clearly that the economic case for refuse truck electrification is very strong.” 

Compared with other heavy-duty vehicle applications, like long-haul tractor trailers, refuse fleets already have the advantage of being housed overnight at dedicated depots, which makes for easier decisions when setting up charging infrastructure. Overnight charging also provides the most affordable electricity, Minjares said.

Still, much of the refuse industry is taking a “watch and wait” approach to battery electric trucks as early adopters test how well they work for daily waste and recycling collection. As the industry has considered alternative fuels broadly, nearly 270 zero-emission refuse trucks have been deployed in the U.S. to date, according to information shared by clean transportation group CALStart. This sector has seen an annual growth rate of 153% from 2017 through 2021.

Mack Trucks, one of the waste and recycling industry’s leading manufacturers of trucks, continues to roll out electric versions, having worked to date with Republic Services, the New York City Department of Sanitation, and the cities of Santa Cruz, California, and Ocala, Florida, among others.

Haulers and municipalities are pursuing EVs from other manufacturers, too. Incentives are “essential at this point” to the adoption of electric, said Scott Barraclough, senior product manager of e-mobility at Mack Trucks.

“The electric vehicle market in general, I would say, is still in its infancy, especially on the heavy-duty side,” Barraclough said. “I think customers are starting to see that this is now a real product. It's not just a one-off or a science project. These are production trucks going to customers, running with the regular trucks.”

Casella Waste Systems is preparing to pilot two electric Mack trucks in Vermont. Casella received the first truck in December, but it’s not yet in operation, according to Director of Communications Jeff Weld. Switching one truck from diesel to electric could each year conserve 7,500 gallons of diesel fuel and eliminate over 78 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions, Casella estimates.

Casella’s 2022 sustainability report said alternative fuel vehicles “comprise a small portion of our routed vehicle fleet, with further expansion limited largely by infrastructure gaps, steep terrain, and winter weather conditions in our operating region,” but it noted a “strong” interest in alternative fuels.

Casella went with Mack given their longstanding relationship and drivers’ familiarity with the brand, Weld said, as well as the convenience of Mack’s service agreements. Casella and Mack both are interested in assessing the trucks’ performance in cold and mountainous environments.

”You don't want to be too far ahead” of the technology, Weld said, but it has evolved quickly. Being able to lean into an existing vendor relationship helped Casella move forward in line with its sustainability priorities, he said. It’s unknown at this point how, exactly, Casella will consider findings from this pilot in its broader fleet planning, Weld said, but it will be looking closely at whether these trucks can be a viable solution in residential areas and how it could scale them efficiently.

Updated artificial intelligence capabilities are helping waste collectors automatically identify contamination inside recycling carts long before the material arrives at a MRF. 

Collection vehicles have been outfitted with cameras for years, mainly for safety and fleet management applications. But in a newer trend, haulers are attaching AI-enabled camera systems directly to recycling collection trucks in order to see and measure items in recycling bins that shouldn’t be there. 

Such a system can capture images of the material as it’s dumped into the truck. Then, it analyzes the images for incorrect items, such as stray plastic bags or food waste, and sends photos of the offending items directly to customers to offer personalized feedback on how to recycle correctly. 

In addition to identifying contamination using AI, the system can often identify other issues such as overfilled containers or bins that were not placed out in time to be picked up. 

Municipalities are starting to purchase the technology from a variety of companies as a way to reduce contamination-related costs and serve as an enforcement strategy in communities where contamination can lead to fines, said Craig Wittig, The Recycling Partnership’s vice president of grant implementation. Many truck-mounted AI technologies can also mark pickups as complete using GPS, something drivers used to have to do by hand. 

“This is on the cusp of really taking off, especially with municipalities,” Wittig said. “They have a vested interest because they are the ones that are paying contamination fees. They're the ones that are impacted by increased processing fees or straight out rejections. This technology can give concrete contamination data.”

Truck-mounted technology also allows companies to collect this insight without requiring added labor from drivers, and it can do it “at scale and in a highly automated fashion,” stated Ken Tierney, product manager at AMCS Group, in a news release announcing the company’s partnership with private haulers and municipalities.

WM has its own technology, known as Smart Truck, which the company said is installed on “thousands” of its vehicles, including throughout California and Texas. Trucks equipped with Smart Truck technology reduce contamination by as much as 20% when paired with targeted educational outreach, the company said. 

Brent Bell, WM’s vice president of recycling, told Business Insider in a sponsored post that it’s a powerful tool to help “remove the guesswork and educate our customers, so more materials can be captured and used again.”

Other cities have more recently adopted similar technology. East Lansing, Michigan, partnered with Canadian company Prairie Robotics to install AI-enabled, truck-mounted cameras in the hoppers of city collection vehicles. The city wants more data on contamination issues, but it also uses the technology to measure recycling program participation, Wittig said. TRP and the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy provided grants and technical support.

East Lansing “has a MRF contract that has tolerances on contamination, and while they weren't exceeding them, they wanted to be proactive in their approach and be an active participant in the recycling system,” he said.  

Early results show the program has reduced contamination by about 25%, Michigan EGLE said. That success has helped the program expand to Bay City, Michigan, which is in the midst of a six-month pilot project that uses the same tech on its own fleet.

“Public education is critical, because when wrong items are inadvertently placed in the recycling cart, they can injure workers at the recycling facility, lower the quality of good recyclables, and damage sorting equipment,” said James Blake, Bay City’s environmental services manager, in a statement.

Meanwhile, Peninsula Sanitary Service, a hauler that has served Stanford University in California for more than 80 years, recently partnered with AMCS to add that company’s Vision AI technology to collection vehicles. Last year, the university and the hauler negotiated a new 10-year contract that included an agreement to use the camera technology. Stanford sees the tech upgrades as an important step toward achieving its 2030 zero waste goals.

A major strength of truck-mounted AI systems, Wittig said, is their ability to automate a process that is typically time-consuming and potentially dangerous for humans to do. A “feet on the street” contamination audit generally requires humans to physically walk pickup routes, open up bins by hand and take photos of contents. This type of audit can cost a city up to twice as much as installing truck-mounted AI systems, he said. 

However, human auditors have also benefited in recent years from handheld AI-assisted technology, such as contamination-finding, smartphone-based tools like Zabble, Wittig said. Last week, Zabble announced it received a grant from the U.S. EPA to continue developing its contamination monitoring software that helps haulers and jurisdictions in California meet contamination requirements laid out in SB 1383. 

Handheld technologies can still offer users valuable contamination insights, but truck-mounted technologies tend to offer a more instantaneous, automated process, Wittig said. Most of the available truck-mounted contamination technologies have features that can directly mail or email images to its customers to alert them to any issues, often pairing it with educational information about what is and is not recyclable.

In East Lansing, the pilot program is seeing “promising” results as customers continue to get personalized postcards showing contamination and offering tips. “When you recognize your own Albertson’s bag [in the photo], it makes an impression that is close to home,” Wittig said.

However, a major limitation of automated AI systems is that the cameras are often mounted inside the truck and measure contents as they’re dumped, Wittig said. “The cart’s already in the air and tipping into the truck, so if you had significant contamination, you can’t really stop that from going into the truck. At least with [feet on the street audits] you can reject the cart,” he said.

Though truck-mounted systems for contamination control aren’t as common as other truck-mounted camera systems meant to optimize routes or monitor safety, Wittig thinks more companies will adopt contamination-related AI for their fleets in the future. States and communities with strict contamination guidelines are looking for faster, more reliable ways to gather data to meet reporting requirements, he said. 

Extended producer responsibility legislation will likely drive more AI business, he said, since EPR bills require data reporting on packaging and other materials producers must manage at end of life. 

“AI is already light years ahead of where it was a few years ago, and we’ll continue seeing new applications,” Wittig said.

Changing tens or hundreds of thousands of residents’ waste and recycling collection days often comes with a few bumps in the road.

But sometimes embarking on a reroute or schedule change is necessary because of how population growth and development skews crews’ workloads, or collecting new materials means needing to drive to different transfer sites. Sometimes, municipalities see an opportunity to digitize routes to optimize labor or fuel efficiency, or minimize wear and tear to roads. 

Phoenix, Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas, are among the cities that have seen reroutes in recent years. While reroutes often involve some upfront investment and months for all customers to fully adjust, municipal waste leaders hope that their recent undertakings will set them up for smoother updates in the future as their cities continue to grow.

Deciding to change

Prior to the fall of 2022, Phoenix’s last route change process was more than a decade ago. During that time, more than 20,000 single-family residences were added, but not equally across regions of the city, which led to imbalances in waste and recycling collection workloads. One goal of the reroute was to better manage that growth without immediately needing to add more trucks and drivers.

“We wanted to make sure that for each of our drivers, it was as equitable a work day as possible,” said Phoenix Public Works Deputy Director Justeen Cook.

Working with the city’s planning and development agency, the department looked at route metrics including the number of homes to collect from, tons collected, anticipated development and distance to transfer sites. Basically “everything that’s involved in collection on a 10-hour day,” Cook described.

Taking those numbers, they split four equitable regions into five equitable days of collection: “which, again, didn’t equate to the same number of living units or the same number of tons, but really the same amount of work that needs to be done per day based on how far from the transfer station each of these days of collection would be,” Cook explained.

Sacramento, California, has also seen population shifts, but a 2021 reroute that affected some 60% of residential customers was largely spurred by a regulatory change. Over a decade prior, city crews had been on a 5-day, 8-hour collection schedule, and switched to a 4-day, 10-hour schedule. With its recent schedule change, it switched back to the 5-8 model.

One of the big motivations for the change was to prepare for California’s SB 1383 regulation, which requires organics collection. While the city has had weekly yard waste service, it was adding food waste collection across all residences. The city wanted to ensure that drivers could more efficiently reach processors before getting back on route, said Erin Treadwell, waste compliance manager with the city of Sacramento.

Some Fort Worth, Texas, residents saw schedule changes in the fall of 2022. Those adjustments came in light of challenges around the fact that the fastest-growing areas were in the north and northwest, and the landfill was in the southeast section of the city. 

Code Compliance Director Brandon Bennett said the need was apparent years ago but was put off until the city was past the thick of the pandemic. The city, which contracts with WM, had also noticed that busy Tuesday routes were the day that was most likely to not be completed on time; after the reroute, Tuesdays no longer represented the biggest fail rate, Bennett said.

Communicating change

In Sacramento, the city debated about when it was best to alert the public to the shifting schedule. Ultimately, the city opted to start the communication a month or so out, rather than at four to six months when they didn’t yet have all the information.

“They want enough to know, ‘okay, next week I need to make a change,’” Treadwell said. The city also put its 311 group on alert in anticipation of lots of calls about missed pickups. The initial plan in place for mixed pickups entailed having additional staff and trucks ready to pick up on Saturdays and Sundays.

Similarly, in Phoenix, where changes started Oct. 3, 2022, the city allowed unlimited courtesy collections through the end of the year. Getting the attention of customers that aren’t on social media and even who were tough to reach by mail was a challenge, Cook said.

Fort Worth set certain parameters but left it to WM to figure out how best to handle the reroute. Additionally, when the city negotiated a contract with WM in 2022, the company agreed to install technology on its trucks that could help capture pickup data. The city and the company also collaborated on a targeted messaging campaign, Bennett said. Some unexpected challenges with mailers were that they overlapped with election season, and also there were a portion of homes where the person living at the address differed from the person paying the account.

Effective communication with the public is critical, and so too with departments deciding to undergo this process and their crews. Decisions can be political, or leaders sometimes say that something’s always been done a certain way, said Josh Krumski, an associate professional at SCS Engineers. Sometimes departments aren’t willing to change collection days within a reroute process.

Brooke Aumann, a senior project professional at SCS Engineers, said concerns about it being an expensive process also come up. “With [geographic information system mapping] in general, there, the upfront cost is maybe a little higher. But the point is that it saves you time and effort and money on the back end,” Aumann said.

When a city does embark on the process, it’s important to be clear on what the ultimate goals are and what’s involved in the final product. Because data is the basis of a redesign, the data acquisition itself can take more than a year. And some municipalities still operate with paper maps, so a lot of data is not digitized. Aumann noted the importance of bridging the gap between solid waste and GIS professionals.

Krumski said that when working with a municipality on such a project sometimes they’ll do a survey of drivers, do ride-alongs, or even follow trucks with a stopwatch to collect data. Krumski, whose background is in the solid waste industry, highlighted the importance of messaging with crews, too. “We’re here because it’s not right for one truck to get done an hour before another truck,” he said.

Planning for the future

Particularly for cities that digitize route maps, future changes won’t require reinventing the wheel. Building on a base from a previous undertaking allows for a shorter, less expensive process. “If you expend a little bit of extra effort on the front end, these things can be added to the processes that are repeatable,” Aumann said.

Having recently gone through big changes, these cities hope that future adjustments could be more iterative and possibly more frequent.

Cook said that, in Phoenix, they wanted to stress to their executive teams that doing a citywide reroute every 10 to 13 years is a lengthy and labor-intensive undertaking. “It was a lot of information that had to be gathered in order to make a good, sound decision based off of data that was available,” Cook said.

Presently, they use paper drivers’ logs and sign-in/sign-out sheets. To chart a different path forward, Phoenix has taken steps to add technology from Samsara and Rubicon. In adding technology and digitizing data, “it makes going through this process a lot faster, and also it allows us to look at it in a more timely manner.” The city envisions smaller internal changes in the future. And if shifts in staff resources and collection days do need to happen, “I'm able to do that and only impact say 10,000 customers rather than 418,000 customers,” Cook said.

Treadwell also said the future process will look more iterative in Sacramento. The city has tried to look at growth five to eight years out. It would be “an internal endeavor, iterative process rather than what the public would really have to be informed about because they're changing something on them.”

Fort Worth believes the process will improve in the future. Given the pace of growth in the area and the construction and congestion it brings, Bennett believes another round of changes may be possible three to five years down the road. “It gets better every time because data collection gets better every time,” he said.

Together for Safer Roads, a national fleet trucking safety organization, has partnered with the National Waste & Recycling Association to extend its fleet safety program to the association’s independent waste and recycling haulers. NWRA is searching for haulers with fewer than 100 trucks to join the new cohort.

The FOCUS on Fleet Safety Training Program helps small and midsized fleet operators adopt best practices for improving their safety culture. The program has been in operation since 2022, but the NWRA partnership aims to target waste and recycling operators who often have time, personnel and resource constraints that larger operators might not have.

Previous FOCUS trainings took place live, but TSR is working on an updated version of the program that can be completed in online modules, making the program more accessible and adaptable to independent operators’ schedules, the organization said.

The partnership comes as the waste industry is continually working to improve injury and fatality rates, including from crashes and deaths related to fleet vehicles. Waste collection was listed as the seventh deadliest job in the U.S. in 2022, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

At the same time, NWRA members have been searching for safety resources that acknowledge the multiple roles workers must play in smaller companies, said Kirk Sander, chief of staff and vice president of safety and standards. “For the most part, if you’re a company with under 50 trucks, you don’t really have a dedicated safety manager,” he said. 

TSR works with businesses, community groups and government agencies to prevent injuries and deaths related to vehicle crashes, including through fleet safety programs, distracted driving programs and the promotion of in-cab dash cameras.

FOCUS is meant to be a flexible program independent haulers can customize to their operations and priorities, said Peter Goldwasser, TSR’s executive director. The program, which stands for “fairness, openness, capability, unity and sustainability,” covers aspects such as building a safety culture and understanding drivers’ perspectives and motivations. It also delves into strategies for collecting data, assessing leading and lagging indicators, selecting the right safety technology and other facets. FOCUS also offers executive coaching and benchmarking resources.

Ultimately, FOCUS aims to “really meet drivers and companies where they are,” Goldwasser said. “What does a safety culture mean for you, your drivers and your business and what does that look like?”

A previous version of the program required participants to log into live webinars, which Goldwasser said were hard for some participants to attend due to scheduling conflicts. “We still want the fleets all working together and learning from each other,” he said. “The idea was, how do we lower the barrier to entry?” 

A new “FOCUS 2.0” version will now allow haulers in the cohort to participate in recorded training modules on their own time, but still sets aside parts of the program where participants can collaborate with peers.

Establishing training that works for small and midsize fleets is important since they make up about 88% of all commercial fleets on the road, Goldwasser said.

Previous cohorts have included a mix of different types of companies from equipment rental groups to office furniture suppliers, as well as waste companies like Filco Carting and composting organizations such as GrowNYC, Goldwasser said. The NWRA-specific cohort will include companies that are all in the waste industry.

NWRA first partnered with TSR in 2020 in an effort to make more of the organization’s safety resources available to association members. Republic Services is on the global advisory group for TSR along with other partners like PepsiCo and UPS.  Republic has endorsed the FOCUS program, which Sander said is an important way to show independent companies that the program understands how important fleet safety is to the waste industry. “We hope that can really help with engagement,” Sander said. 

Allowing fleet operators to connect with each other and share ideas can also go a long way in helping individual companies foster stronger safety environments, Goldwasser said. “Safety has to come from the top and the bottom and it has to be a collaborative process, or it doesn't feel authentic to that business. And that is really critical,” he said.