The engines on some of timber company Weyerhaeuser's log trucks driving around western Oregon may sound the same, but what is in their fuel tanks is definitely not the typical diesel that such trucks have long run on.
The company has begun using 10 trucks that run on compressed natural gas and plans to grow that number, phasing out most of the diesel fleet running out of its Goshen facility, just south of Eugene.
Company representatives said it is an early adopter of the technology, putting it at the vanguard of running trucks on alternative fuels.
"We could be driving the next generation of trucks and leading the way on that, and I think that’s exciting,” said Gary Romine, Weyerhaeuser’s Oregon transportation manager. “We’ll be able to look back on that with pride and say we took that chance and stepped out of our comfort zone."
Weyerhaeuser has already switched 10 of its 70 trucks at the Goshen facility to CNG, and it has an agreement to continue to grow the number over five years.
“Ten trucks a year is kind of the plan,” said Travis Ridgway, Director of Harvest and Transportation for Weyerhaeuser. “With what we’ve seen so far, there wouldn’t be any reason that we wouldn’t continue to expand this, since we already have this infrastructure in place here.”
Ridgway added that continued improvements to the truck’s range that will push them closer to 400 miles per tank of CNG will allow further use of the alternative fuel trucks.
The company has contracted Portland-based Fix Infrastructure to build its fueling infrastructure and provide natural gas that is harvested from manure.
Fix Infrastructure’s Christian Cochran said the gas is methane that would otherwise go into the air.
“That doesn’t mean that there’s not any CO2 coming out of the tailpipe, but when you go all of the way through the process it is shown to have a certified negative carbon intensity,” he said.
The gas is pumped into Northwest Natural’s delivery infrastructure, so the company is not necessarily burning the manure-produced gas. However, the same amount of gas it uses is being injected into the system.
