"An APU allows them to turn that big engine off," said Jon Eide, senior vice president of Wells Fargo & Co.'s commercial vehicle lending division, which has $1.8 billion in heavy-duty truck and trailer loans outstanding. "That's a very efficient source of fuel savings."
Tires, too, are getting a once-over. For decades, the top priorities in truck tires were durability and cost. Now, fuel efficiency has moved to the head of the list.
Although new compounds and tread patterns help, another promising technology is "super singles," which replace side-by-side tire setups with a single, wider tire. That cuts weight by as much as 1,000 pounds and reduces energy loss from tire compression -- which, after aerodynamics, is the largest contributor to fuel consumption at highway speeds. Experts say super singles can cut fuel use by 3%.
Several manufacturers are making hybrid trucks, which capture braking energy to boost mileage, making them perfect for vehicles that make frequent stops, like garbage trucks.
On Friday, the Port of Los Angeles unveiled a fully electric truck it helped develop that's capable of towing shipping containers as far as 30 miles on a single charge.
Kambiz Salari, a fluid dynamics engineer at California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, has spent the last decade developing inventions that increase fuel economy, including a giant fan situated behind a truck's cab that reduces drag-creating turbulence.
None has been adopted commercially, but this year the Energy Department is offering grants to trucking companies that will test those devices on their fleets. "Fuel costs are bringing attention to our research," Salari said.
"This industry is changing," said Weber, the Navistar engineer. "Ten mpg is now feasible."
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ken.bensinger@latimes.com
