A mayoral rivalry helped bring two new Mack LR Electric refuse trucks to the city of Madison, Wisc., the first all-electric waste trucks to be deployed in the state.

“I will say, mayors have a little bit of a competition thing that we do between us,” Madison mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said during a ceremony to celebrate the deployment of the trucks. “And when I heard that the Boise mayor had electric trash trucks, I may have called our folks up and said ‘Excuse me, how did Boise beat us? That’s not OK!’ So, I’m really proud to be the first in Wisconsin, if not the first in the nation.”

The trucks are powered by four NMC (nickel manganese cobalt oxide) lithium-ion batteries and charged by 150 kW chargers. The batteries drive not only the truck but also the hydraulic Labrie sideloader body.

Kriete Truck Centers supplied and will support the trucks. President and CEO David Kriete discussed the arduous journey of getting the dealership EV-certified so it could sell and maintain Mack electric trucks, including these two LR Electrics and the medium-duty MD Electric.

“It was a very similar process to what we went through when natural gas became involved, maybe 15 years ago,” Kriete said of the certification process. EV-certified dealers must train technicians and sales staff on electric vehicles and retrofit facilities to install dedicated EV bays. Parts people must also undergo training to ensure the dealer stocks appropriate EV parts that may break down.

Chargers must also be installed so the dealership can charge trucks that come in for service or repairs with low or no charge.

“There’s a significant investment in that whole process,” Kriete said, adding it took about six months to get the Madison dealership EV-certified. And of the four Kriete dealerships that have been certified so far, the Madison dealership was the fastest one to certify.

“The longest of those four, which I believe is up in Marathon County, is pushing 18 months. So, there’s a pretty significant backlog to get up to grade and get everybody in line to work on your building,” Kriete said.

Significant investment in certification

The cost of getting a dealership EV-certified runs about US$200,000-$300,000 per facility. However, Kriete sees increasing demand for electric trucks, even in the Midwest. And not just among government fleets. The dealership will soon deliver several MD Electrics to a privately held carrier that operates in 48 states.

“I think those are the two best applications,” Kriete said of electric’s place in the refuse and medium-duty P&D segments. “And we’re blessed that Mack has invested in those two [applications] first. Shorter haul, home at night business segments is where this will thrive.”

The LR Electrics in Madison have already been put into service and run about seven- to eight-hour shifts. They return to the city’s facility for charging overnight. The city is no stranger to electric vehicles. It already operates 100 fully-electric light-duty vehicles, 150 hybrids, and will put 62 fully-electric buses into service this month.

Rhodes-Conway explained why the city is eager to transition to electric vehicles.

Lower cost of operation

“We buy new vehicles all the time and we are constantly interested in buying the best vehicles for our community,” she said. “One of the reasons we’re going all-in on electrification is because it’s better for the environment, and mostly because it’s better for air quality. And when you think about these vehicles behind me, our trash and recycling trucks hit every single block in the city. They drive down every street in every neighborhood picking up trash and recycling and that is a lot of diesel fumes in our neighborhoods.”

But she also said there’s a compelling economic reason to invest in much costlier electric refuse trucks.

“It’s a win for reducing our climate pollution footprint in our community, but government never does things for just one reason,” Rhodes-Conway added. “It’s also a win for our budget, because what we have found with our electric vehicle fleets is that we actually have long-term savings, and it has reduced maintenance for our fleets which saves us in terms of parts. It has also reduced fuel costs and this is a way the city of Madison is investing on the capital side to save us money on the operating side.”

George Fotopoulos, vice-president of e-mobility with Mack Trucks, traveled to Madison from Greensboro, N.C., to participate in the event.

“What’s the big deal about delivering a couple refuse trucks? Well, obviously they’re electric, so that makes it a big deal. They’re also the first heavy-duty refuse electric vehicles in the state of Wisconsin, so that’s a pretty big deal,” he explained. “The introduction of these electric vehicles is not just about replacing old trucks with new trucks. It’s embarking in a new era of waste management.”

Quiet operation

One of the benefits — in addition to producing no tailpipe emissions — is the quiet operation of an electric refuse truck, which was demonstrated at the event as a Mack LR Electric picked up three bins representative of those used by Madison households. The only noise produced was that of the hydraulics as the Labrie body – powered by the onboard batteries – picked up and dumped the bins’ contents into the compactor.

Of course, Madison weather will put to test the cold weather capabilities of the electric trucks. Fotopoulos acknowledges there’s about a 15-20% gap in range capability between the most ideal and coldest weather the trucks are likely to encounter.

The Madison fleet includes about 30 trash and recycling trucks that are in service daily, with 10-12 backups. Some of them are fitted with plows in the winter, but that’s not an ideal application for battery-electric trucks, Fotopoulos admitted, since pushing heavy snow will quickly deplete the batteries.

The goal for Mack is to achieve 1:1 parity in performance, between what a battery-electric refuse truck can do in a day versus a diesel or natural gas counterpart on a single charge or tank fill.