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The Heavy Duty Parts Report
Each week Jamie Irvine and his guests have conversations that empower heavy-duty people. They discuss tips, tools, and technology that help heavy-duty parts manufacturers and distributors sell the right parts to fleets, repair shops, and truck operators.
The Heavy Duty Parts Report
Do You Have the Right Battery for Winter?
Episode 343: Proper planning can prevent poor performance in your heavy-duty parts business and can also reduce break downs on the side of the road. As winter comes, one of the ways to prepare is to make sure you have good batteries – on the shelf in your parts store, and in your vehicle.
Our guest, Jeremy Cordray from EnerSys, helps us to understand the differences in battery technology. We also discuss why different batteries will be required in electric and autonomous vehicles as more countries head toward reduced emissions objectives.
Show Notes: Visit HeavyDutyPartsReport.com for complete show notes of this episode and to subscribe to all our content.
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You're listening to the Heavy-Duty Parts Report. I'm your host, jamie Irvin, and this is the place where we have conversations that empower heavy-duty people. Welcome to another episode of the Heavy-Duty Parts Report so glad that you are here. In this episode, we're going to talk about the importance of proper planning and how that prevents poor performance. We're going to talk about the need for selecting the right battery for the correct application, especially considering that we are entering into fall and winter is coming. This definitely impacts people in the great white north up here in Canada, as well as the northern United States, and we're going to round out our conversation today talking about how it's important that you don't look only at purchase price when looking at things like batteries. Let's get into it. So when you are planning maintenance for commercial equipment, you have to take into consideration things like seasonality, and so right now we're entering into fall, we're going, you know, winter's coming, and so, as I mentioned in our intro, for people who are in the northern climates, batteries is something that they have to concern themselves with as the weather gets colder the morning and turning that key and there's nothing going on, and so this definitely has a negative impact on things like downtime and on overall total cost of operation.
Jamie Irvine:When you're running a heavy-duty parts business, it's very similar. There are seasons that you have to think about. There's long wave cycles that affect us over many, many decades and years. That affect us over many, many decades and years. There's short cycles that we look at on, let's say, a shorter time period, like a five-year cycle when it comes to the economy, or an annual cycle when it comes to just the natural ebb and flow of business in the heavy duty parts industry. Now, I am a big fan of the five Ps. Proper planning prevents poor performance and just like when you can look ahead and you know cold weather is coming and you know that batteries are going to be an issue, when you're managing or leading a heavy-duty parts business, there are certain things that you can look ahead and you can know this is coming. I need to get ready for it Now. This affects things like what inventory you have and the way that you look at your inventory turns and your sales mix. We can also look at things like the trade show seasons. We can look at the different seasons from weather and how that impacts people's buying behavior. We can look at the seasons in relation to people's holidays, look at the seasons in relation to people's holidays. Many of these things we can account for and we can plan for, and what we see missing in a lot of companies is a strategic business plan that really lays out what it is that we're trying to accomplish at our business, how we plan on accomplishing that and what are the things that we can account for right here and now that will help us to build that strategic plan.
Jamie Irvine:Some people do make a plan, but then they just kind of put it on the shelf and they don't use it. With our clients, when we work with them on a strategic business plan, this becomes a big part of their daily conversation with their managers, with their supervisors, with their managers, with their supervisors, with their employees, with their suppliers, with their financial institutions, investors, shareholders. The strategic business plan should help you, as a leader, to have all the conversations you need to have. It should also clearly explain where it is you intend on going, what factors you've accounted for and what each individual department, right down to individual people, are responsible for to make it happen. With this proper planning, you can accomplish some pretty great things. I see a lot of people try to shortcut the system. They want the result, but they don't necessarily want to put the time and effort into developing a plan and then going out and executing that plan in a disciplined way.
Jamie Irvine:We're going to have an entire episode dedicated to this subject of strategic business planning coming up in just three weeks, in episode 346. And we're going to break this down in much more detail. But if you're leading a heavy duty parts company, it is essential that you have this type of plan in place, and so I really encourage you to tune in to our program in that upcoming episode, episode 346, with our director of consulting services, scott Boltz, where we talk about strategic business planning. There's a lot of things that you can plan for that you know are coming Now. Obviously, there are things that you cannot plan for, things that happen that you just have to react to. But really you should minimize the amount of time you are reacting to things and try to maximize the amount of time that you are proactively approaching the challenges and the problems that you are proactively approaching the challenges and the problems that you can anticipate in your business when you're running a parts business.
Jamie Irvine:Again, like we said, one such thing is seasonality of product and right now, as we approach the cold weather, batteries is a subject that we need to think about. So, from a parts department perspective, from an inventory perspective, we want to look at not only the high moving, high volume batteries that we are going to sell. We want to make sure that we have a wide range of batteries to meet all the different vocations that our customers are involved in and we want to try to get people off of that old mentality of just, you know, putting in a group 31 battery and calling it a day. Modern equipment requires more sophistication when it comes to selecting batteries. That has an implication on you if you're responsible for procurement of inventory and making sure that you have the right mix of product to take care of your customers' needs. It impacts you if you're on the counter or you're in outside sales, because you're the ones that have to be knowledgeable about this to sell those products.
Jamie Irvine:We're going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsors. When we get back from our break. I've got an interview I want to share with you that we did with a battery manufacturer that really talks about the importance of what we're talking about the wide range of different types of batteries that are now available and what you need to know about each one so you can make great recommendations for people who are buying parts from you and get them to have the right product for their vocation. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back. Are you deferring maintenance because of filter cost or availability? Or, worse yet, are you trading down to no-name filters to try to save a few bucks? Either way, you're rolling the dice. The good news there's a new premium filter option for fleets Hanks Filtration. If you're responsible for a fleet, you won't believe how much using Hanks filters will save you. But you've got to go to heavydutypartsreportcom slash Hanks to find out more. That's heavydutypartsreportcom slash hanks to find out more. That's heavydutypartsreportcom. Slash h-e-n-g-s-t. Head there now At Diesel Laptops, they go way beyond diagnostic tools.
Jamie Irvine:They are your complete shop efficiency partner, from diesel technician training to complete repair information, parts lookup tools and robust technical support. They are there to support you every step of the way. Learn more and download your free starter pack today by visiting DieselLaptopscom. That's DieselLaptopscom. We're back from our break. Before the break, we were talking about the importance of preparation. As a parts person, one of the things you have to prepare for is seasonal products like batteries.
Jamie Irvine:Our guest this week is Jeremy Cordray. He is Enersys head of global transportation products, and he talks to us today about battery technology, how it's changing and how it's so important for us to look at vocation and application when it comes to matching up our customers with the right product. Enersys also just recently announced the launch of their Odyssey battery charger. They've labeled this as the world's first combined AGM and lithium battery charger, and so we're going to put a link towards the end of the interview for you to go over to their website and check out all of their great products, up to and including this innovative battery charger.
Jamie Irvine:Here's my interview with Jeremy from Enersys Now. Jeremy has spent 22 years working alongside some of the brightest people in the battery industry the battery industry and he's had the opportunity to present and share his ideas and his knowledge and his unique perspective to many conferences and other events in the North American market, so he is the man who we want to talk to. He's also got an academic background in mathematics, chemical engineering and business, and the company that he works for, enersys, is a global leader in stored energy solutions. They have a portfolio of products that include everything from industrial to commercial to recreational vehicle, and they also have things like specialty batteries, chargers, power equipment, accessories, outdoor equipment for enclosures and things of that nature. So we've got the right person and the right company to talk to about batteries. Jeremy, welcome to the Heavy-Duty Parts Report. So glad to have you here.
Jeremy Corday:Thank you, jamie, it's great to be here.
Jamie Irvine:So, jeremy, technology is changing fast with batteries. Could you give us an update on you know what's the situation with batteries for commercial trucks today? Is there still a good, better best, or is there other options that fleet should be considering?
Jeremy Corday:You're absolutely right. Over the past four decades, we've really focused, in batteries, on that good, better, best mentality, where we had, you know, a price sensitive, a good bang for your buck, and then your premium type batteries. Today, though, with the technology improvements in batteries, there's not a bad battery built in North America. It's all about marrying up the technology of battery to the application, and that's what it really comes into. And so we're in the 80s and 90s and even the early 2000s. We had that good, better, best, and you could walk into a store or a dealership and they could give you your three options. It's no longer that way. When you walk into a place and look for a battery now, you're flooded with different options, because every application is going to have a good, better best. Just for that application application issues, there would be one over the road type application where they were using a lot of different things.
Jamie Irvine:In the cab, they were running the batteries down. Then you'd have a vocational application where vibration was an issue and plates were breaking and they needed a solution for that, so certainly that was already trending in that direction. Let's talk about some of those different options. Like there's lead acid, there's lithium batteries. Now Give us an indication of what the options are and maybe some examples of where those batteries are used.
Jeremy Corday:In the heavy duty marketplace we really see three or four different predominant types of batteries. We have our starting only flooded batteries. These are those price sensitive batteries where typically on a day cab or an environment where there's not a whole lot going on other than trying to start the truck over and over, where you're doing runs that are close to shops, if your battery fails you can get it replaced and that's really a price-sensitive environment, but we do have those batteries. Outside of that, we've seen a big push into AGM batteries since the mid-2000s, late 2000s or really around 2007,. 2008 is really when we saw AGM batteries get introduced into trucking. They had a real rocky start but with newer models, such as the new Cascadia coming out and other models, we're seeing a big push into predominantly AGM batteries being offered, even from an OEM level, and so we're seeing AGM take a big push.
Jamie Irvine:Before we go on to the other options, the AGM, just for those who maybe aren't familiar with what that acronym stands for. They've got like that matting inside and it's something that protects against vibration, if I remember. Just go into a little bit of the technology, of what makes an AGM battery different.
Jeremy Corday:I appreciate you stopping me because so many times, especially in batteries, especially in trucking, we talk a whole lot of acronyms without explaining what those acronyms really stand for. Agm actually stands for absorbed glass mat stand for NGM actually stands for absorbed glass mat. Absorbed glass mat is essentially all. Batteries are an electrochemistry, meaning we take electrical energy and we store it as chemical energy until we need it again. So when we're storing those electrons, we're storing them and passing them through into a chemical reaction. When we do that we use a cathode and an anode or a positive plate and a negative plate. Those have to be separated from each other to be sure that we can actually store the electron and not just let it out or create a constant loop inside the battery. So we utilize a separator in there.
Jeremy Corday:Now, previously, in a flooded battery and in a lot of previous technologies of batteries, we would do that by just flooding all the plates and keeping a very simple.
Jeremy Corday:It wasn't even a separator, it was a base separation between the two plates. As we got into the 2000s, when we could manufacture these batteries, easier was, rather than just flooding the battery with the electrolyte, the sulfuric acid and water mixture that allows for the electron to pass from cathode to anode. Instead of doing that, we could actually get more plates inside the battery by taking a separator that had that electrolyte right next to the plates and utilized a smaller amount of the electrolyte but put it in a well-positioned area, and when we do that, we could put a lot more plates in as well. So an AGM battery. What it brought to the marketplace, especially in transportation, was the ability to get more capacity in the same footprint. Now, once we were able to fine-t tune that chemical reaction and really create an efficient path for those electrons to get stored and come out, what we were able to do was create a longer lasting, more capacity in the same footprint battery, and that's what AGM batteries are.
Jamie Irvine:Right, and if I remember correctly too, if those plates break or they deteriorate, the more that that occurs, the less the battery's capacity, and then eventually it just it's a dead battery. So especially in high vibration vocations like logging or oil field or something like that, I remember the guys love the AGM because those plates didn't break, they didn't break down as often, they lasted longer. They didn't break down as often, they lasted longer. And so then the total cost of the purchase of that battery even though it was more than like a flooded battery, it actually cost them less in the long run.
Jeremy Corday:Yeah, batteries are very unique because they're electrochemical storage devices. We don't have a lot of those in the market. We hear a lot about lithium and you mentioned all these different kinds of batteries nowadays and it seems awfully foreign to us because we're storing electricity in a chemical format and there's so many things that can go wrong with that. And if you remember back to your high school chemistry, or if you're like me and able to do more in-depth chemistry work, you realize that while there are laws in physics that affect chemistry that always happen, it doesn't always happen the exact same way every time, and batteries are that way, and so when we analyze why a battery fails, we do something called failure mode analysis. Now, sometimes we have to tear the battery down, actually cut the lid off, pull out the plates.
Jeremy Corday:Look at those things.
Jeremy Corday:I was actually doing that alongside a very large fleet and an OE just two weeks ago at our lab in Warrensburg, Missouri, and we were doing that, and what we look for are failure modes.
Jeremy Corday:You can have different failure modes from dry out meaning you used up all the water in the battery, you gassed it off you can get sulfation, you can get stratification, you can get all these different things that failure that the battery fails because of, goes dead, so to speak, and that can tell you what in the application it wasn't designed to meet.
Jeremy Corday:So to your point, if you're in an off-road vocational application, whether it's a utility truck, fleet or something like that, that's really vibration out there Mining, we see this a lot in as well. That vibration will actually shred the plate apart, will vibrate it to where it just ends up falling apart, or it can tear the tabs away from the COS on the top of the battery. So there's different types of failure mode that we can look at, but those failure modes are typically tied whenever it's anything other than what we call PAM degradation positive active material degradation meaning you used up all the storage of the chemistry of the battery and it just failed because it got old and got used up. Anything other than that means that we could have had a better solution for that application.
Jamie Irvine:So, going back to your point earlier about now, there being different batteries for different applications, and that being the situation where we don't really have that good, better, best anymore. You said there was three or four, so what are the other two?
Jeremy Corday:Here at InterSys. We have five plants throughout the world three in Missouri, two over in Europe that build a technology called thin plate pure lead. I'm actually sitting right now inside the most advanced lead acid battery plant in the world. It's in Springfield, Missouri. It's got the newest high speed robotic line to build these type of batteries under high compression. What that means is there's not a whole lot of additives, there's no calcium, there's no antimony, there's none of these other things that get put into the battery that cause premature failures of the chemistry. So we have that. So that's a newer technology, AGM battery. It's pretty predominant in the trucking marketplace, especially under the Northstar brand and the Odyssey brand. In addition to that, we're also seeing some other entries. I know I have worked with some fleets over the past five to 10 years that have been toying around with ultra capacitors. We've seen a big push into that. Most of that didn't get out of the initial phase of testing 4 plus 1 environment, where they use four thin plate pure lead advanced AGM batteries and an ultra cap so that they can always start the vehicle via that ultra cap. But they've separated the circuit and they've done some other things. So there's some technologies like that Now the biggest question I get asked anytime I'm speaking at a conference, especially in heavy duty, or I'm at a trade show.
Jeremy Corday:I don't think I was asked the question no less than 20 times at TMC in the spring, but it was about lithium and specifically, how do I start testing lithium in my fleet? And I start asking more about that, and this is a lithium in diesel engine question how can I replace on a 12-volt side my lead-acid batteries with lithium batteries so I get longer run times and some of the benefits? Well, the first thing we need to understand is in lithium right now we have two ways of looking at lithium in transportation. One in high-voltage packs, whether it's an electric vehicle or a hybrid vehicle, plug-in hybrid. We see a lot of that out there A high-voltage pack and then we see low lot of that out there a high voltage pack and then we see low voltage batteries. These are typically right now in the marketplace.
Jeremy Corday:Lithium iron phosphate it's a different chemistry than the lithium ion, the lithium, nickel, metal, cobalt. Some of the other technologies are out there. Lithium iron phosphate is really the predominant lithium chemistry for 12-volt batteries. We see that right now making a push in mostly marine environments. We haven't seen a good, effective use of it in trucking as of yet. I never say technology doesn't work in an industry, because I always think technology is growing and changing, but what we are seeing right now is that thin plate, pure lead, advanced AGM batteries have a lot more pros than lithium iron phosphate in trucking. So we're not seeing a big push into that Now. Once we go into lithium iron phosphate there's a whole different array of challenges from BMS and other things that we would need to do to get it in. So right now we're not seeing lithium on trucks, but it's a question that everybody comes up with, especially on the 12-volt side.
Jamie Irvine:Jeremy, I could listen to you all day. I feel smarter just having a chance to talk to you for 15 minutes. But we're not done yet. We want to talk about some of the changes in technology that are impacting the trucking industry. So let's talk about APUs, and we're going to put a little letter E in front of that. What's going on in that space?
Jeremy Corday:So I'm actually working on a paper right now on fleet electrification. Where do I start? It's a white paper just to help fleets and not just heavy-duty fleets, but all kinds of fleets start talking about electrification. What we see in the media right now is a whole lot of when is every vehicle going to be fully electric or zero emissions or things like that? By 2030, 2035, 2040,? Put a date to it.
Jeremy Corday:While that's important to get to a zero emissions goal, that's a great goal, but one of the key pieces of electrification a lot of people lose focus isn't about electrifying the propulsion system. It's about electrifying the other pieces on the vehicle and in class eight trucks especially, as well as vocational trucks, we are seeing a huge push in electrification of the parts and pieces outside of propulsion. And what you mentioned EAPU we have seen over the past 10 years a push to electric APU units that is unlike any other. Now, that presents a whole other challenge once you go to an electric APU unit, but what it does is it allows you to move towards some of these steps. I feel that the EAPU is equivalent to in your car of doing start-stop, where your car pulls up to a stop sign, the engine shuts off until it's ready to go again. Your car pulls up to a stop sign, the engine shuts off until it's ready to go again. The're using that power. We are reducing the carbon footprint dramatically, increasing the overall MPGs of that truck very dramatically.
Jeremy Corday:Now when you do that, you introduce another set of batteries on the truck. Now today's trucks are designed to where that's all one circuit actually, so it's not isolated, meaning that that secondary set will also be tied in to help start the truck as well. And so we're seeing them run separate circuits off of the alternator, but we're still seeing them can stay on the same circuit Now because they're far, far away from the alternator as opposed to the understep batteries. We are seeing some challenges with how we do it. New technologies, such as remote sense, better battery management systems, both on the APU as well as on the truck, are really addressing evenly charging those batteries. So you're right, this new technology we're seeing, especially with EAPUs and solar, we're seeing a lot of solar come in with those APUs helping keeping them topped off, helping add additional charge into the system when the engine isn't running. All those technologies are really moving us forward.
Jamie Irvine:We actually just had Green Road Energy on the show and they're developing basically a wind turbine that, as the vehicle is propelled down the highway, it's capturing that wind and providing an electrical charge to keep those batteries topped up. So there's all kinds of different ways of getting there. You mentioned how right now we've got government mandates and we're really seeing a push from the political side. When I was doing a bit of research ahead of our discussion, I came across this new European battery regulation that seems to be pretty prolific in the news not necessarily in our mainstream media, but it's out there if you search for it. Are these kinds of regulations that will be seen in Europe? Are they going to impact the North American market? What do you think the impact is going to be on us?
Jeremy Corday:It constantly changes. It doesn't matter what technology it is, how it comes about. We are seeing things change faster today than we've ever seen, and you have to stay up with those type of things. Electrification and EVs were the big push, especially for fleets and things like that, up until a couple of years ago, and we started seeing a big push to zero emissions. Let's realize that maybe it's not electric vehicles Hydrogen may have a place to play in this which is essentially an internal combustion engine with a different fuel source other than diesel, and so the goal is zero emissions, and I think we're going to continue to see a shift from focusing on electrification only to zero emissions, to reducing our carbon footprint, whether we can do that via solar wind, many other forms, hydrogen there's some great technology out there utilizing nitrogen for refrigeration units and on trailers and things like that. There's some great technologies out there.
Jeremy Corday:I don't think any of us know, and I will throw batteries into this as well. Right now, we're really focused on lithium batteries, right, but Tesla has announced some research that they've done on a nickel-based battery that they feel can last upwards of 100 years on electric vehicles, so it may not even be lithium batteries that comes into play long-term from an electrification standpoint. The biggest key here is to keep our eye on the prize, which is zero emissions, a reducing our carbon footprint. If we keep our eye on that end goal, we'll be able to ebb and flow with these changes. Whether it's raw materials based, whether it's manufacturing based, whether it's technology of electrochemistry based, we'll be able to ebb and flow with those as long as we keep our eye on the horizon, which is at zero emissions.
Jamie Irvine:And then the regulations and whatnot. It's a moving target, so those things are going to change anyway. So, when we're talking about the long-term future of the trucking industry, obviously autonomous vehicles are going to play a role to. To your point and I agree with you 100% I think we're going to see an omni-propulsion system available, meaning many different propulsion systems. What do you think the long-term impact on batteries is going to be, especially if we have, let's say, a fully autonomous vehicle that, for example, is electric?
Jeremy Corday:So there's a lot of chemistry today, a battery chemistry today, that could solve a lot of our problems that we struggle with. You know we need more power. The more we put more technology we put on a truck, especially autonomous, more energy consumption, more power generation we're going to need on the truck, and so as we deal with that, we're looking for lighter weight, more energy density, all these things. Today, intersys, we build batteries that get used for aerospace and defense. So on the James Webb telescope, for instance, we made the batteries that have gone up into space and get utilized with that. We made the batteries that have gone up into space and get utilized with that. That is a technology of lithium batteries, which is about half the weight of most lithium batteries. It's called lithium NMC and you can read a lot about it. It's a really predominant technology out there. One of the challenges is it's very, very expensive and it's not easy to manufacture. So we have to ebb and flow and figure out how those technologies are going to come in, and I think that autonomy is going to actually propel us forward a lot faster than some of the EV work that we're doing.
Jeremy Corday:I think autonomy is going to require us to do multiple circuits on the truck. Ev we're separating. A diesel engine internal combustion engine truck has one circuit. It's a 12-volt circuit. All the accessories jump on that circuit. You have your circuit on the truck. The alternator is 12-volt, everything is 12-volt on the truck. An EV truck has two circuits that are combined with a DC-to-DC charger and converter and that unit has a low-voltage 12-volt circuit and then a high voltage depending on the truck and the battery pack circuit.
Jeremy Corday:Autonomy we are seeing the first major autonomy trucks, whether it's Dymo with Waymo or some of the other ones that are out there. We're seeing up to three or more circuits on the truck, typically of the same voltage, and that's from a redundancy standpoint because of safety. With autonomy we can get there with the safety and with the way the cameras are nowadays Over in Europe it's fascinating to see the removal of side view mirrors on trucks as they replace them with cameras. I'm sure we've all seen on social media the Samsung truck that actually shows you what is in front of the truck, on the back doors of the trailer, on the truck, and so there's some of those technologies out there we will start seeing.
Jeremy Corday:But autonomy is definitely here to stay and it's really it's such a big consumption thing and if power goes out or if it drops below a certain voltage, even for a split second, a fraction, a one hundredth of a second split second, a fraction, a one hundredth of a second it's like putting your hands over a driver's eyes in a regular driven truck. So that's not something that can be allowed to happen. So we're going to see a big push on autonomy in trucks from a safety standpoint, to increase the power that is being stored on these trucks.
Jamie Irvine:You've been listening to the Heavy Duty Parts Report. I'm your host, jamie Irvin, and we've been speaking with Jeremy Cordray, enersys Head of Global Transportation Products, to learn more about their great products, up to and including that innovative new battery charger that does both AGM and lithium batteries. Head over to odysseybatterycom. Links are in the show notes. All right, it's time for another edition of that's Not Heavy Duty. In this edition of that's Not Heavy Duty, I want to just keep talking about batteries and I want to talk about purchase price versus picking the right battery for the right application. In my years of selling parts, everybody just wanted the cheapest battery they could get their hands on. But what happened when they bought that cheap, you know low quality group 31 battery? They would burn those batteries out within 12 months and every year, like clockwork, they were changing them. I want to encourage you to talk to your customers about doing an actual calculation on replacement costs over a three or four year period on batteries using those cheap batteries. I want you to also factor in labor downtime and try to come up with an actual total cost for buying the cheapest battery. So any of your customers who are buying the cheapest batteries, try to find out what the total cost is for them, show it to them and then show them a battery that is better for their particular vocation, one that is really suited for them, that's going to last a lot longer. You know, be conservative. Only push it out two years maybe three at the most, depending on the battery and ask them to make a better buying decision. Don't just buy the cheapest stuff. Buy the right part for the right application, the right quality level to lower your total cost of operation. And use this as a way to start teaching your customers the heavy duty way, which is to not look at purchase price but rather to look at total cost of operation. That's being heavy duty and as a salesperson inside sales, outside sales that is a way for you to differentiate yourself from everybody else.
Jamie Irvine:Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of the heavy duty parts report. If you haven't already, I want to encourage you to go over to heavydutypartsreportcom. Sign up to our weekly email so you never miss out on any of our content. We only said one email a week, no spam. We just let you know what the new episodes are so you don't miss out.
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