Small Vendors Aim to Replace IdleAire’s Truck-Stop Services

This story appears in the March 1 print edition of Transport Topics.

The demise of IdleAire, the largest U.S. truck-stop electrification vendor, leaves the door open for several smaller operators that hope to build their own businesses with a simpler product.

Companies are marketing brands such as Shorepower, AireDock, CabAire and EnviroDock to keep the truck stop electrification concept alive at a handful of sites as they seek more funds to expand.

IdleAire, which claimed its technology prevented 1.1 billion pounds of emissions from truck-engine idling, shut down abruptly Jan. 29, leaving more than 8,000 parking spaces vacant at 134 locations. With losses that were 2.5 times revenue, IdleAire went bankrupt twice in its nine-year history.

“There is still a tremendous opportunity for truck-electrification companies” despite IdleAire’s failure because of the environmental benefits of making electric power available to parked trucks, said Dan Shanahan, director of sales and marketing for CabAire LLC.

The remaining players, which have fewer than 1,000 parking spaces and 13 active facilities, need to expand and cut their costs to survive, Alan Bates, director of marketing for Shorepower Technologies, Portland, Ore., told Transport Topics.

“There has to be a critical mass of availability to get fleets and owner-operators interested,” Bates said. “No one will be interested unless they can get to a convenient plug-in spot. What’s needed is a very simple solution.”

The vendors offer two truck-stop electrification approaches.

One is heating and cooling bundled with other services, such as Internet or cable television, through a duct connection system such as IdleAire’s. But rather than IdleAire’s offerings of pay-per-view movies and hundreds of channels, the survivors that use the duct system provide only heating, air conditioning and basic Internet or cable television services.

A second approach, known as shore power because it is similar to nautical installations, provides electricity to the cab, using a cord to operate in-cab air conditioners, heaters and other appliances.

CabAire’s system, called a dual-service tower, is intended to deliver both types of services.

Shorepower Technologies, as the name implies, requires onboard equipment, but the service costs half of what IdleAire charged.

AireDock and EnviroDock both use duct systems.

Like IdleAire, which received $55 million in federal funding to build facilities, the companies are pursuing funds from the federal economic stimulus program. Florida, Maine and Tennessee currently are advertising for truck-stop electrification projects to be funded through that program.

Shorepower, the largest survivor, has seven facilities in North Carolina, Oregon and Washington, Bates said. The firm intends to build a network of 200 to 250 locations over five years, focusing on key trucking corridors such as interstates 5, 10, 20, 80 and 95.

CabAire, a division of Control Module Industries, Enfield, Conn., is adding facilities in Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania later this year, using a combination of federal, state and private funds, Shanahan said.

CabAire now operates two facilities, one each in Connecticut and North Carolina.

Two smaller survivors are AireDock of Massachusetts and EnviroDock Inc. of White Plains, N.Y. Each has two facilities with fewer than 10 spaces apiece.

Tom Greene, product manager for EnviroDock, said IdleAire’s departure can be viewed two ways.

“It could be a problem because of the perception that there isn’t a market out there” for truck-stop electrification, or TSE, he said. “The positive way to look at it is that they didn’t have the right business model. We are a lot better-positioned.”

Greene said EnviroDock simplified pricing by allowing truck-stop operators and drivers to include TSE with other transactions, such as food purchases, instead of IdleAire’s system of separate payments.

David Davies, CEO of CraufurdManufacturing, Belchertown, Mass., said AireDock simplifies the costly IdleAire process that required two people to lift the 70-pound duct unit.

AireDock weighs only eight pounds, he said, and needs no on-site personnel because funds are collected electronically.

“We do treat the demise of IdleAire as a tragedy,” Davies said. “We need truck-stop electrification, not just because we make it, but because the country needs it. They built out an infrastructure that isn’t being used.”

The fate of the installed IdleAire equipment, worth an estimated $150 million, is not known.

TravelCenters of America, with 108 installations, didn’t return calls requesting comment. Pilot Travel Centers, which had 10 installations, is waiting for IdleAire to take out the equipment within a specified contract period, spokeswoman Cynthia Moxley said, and will dispose of it if IdleAire doesn’t remove the equipment.