J.B. Hunt Buys 4,000 Trailers with New Rear Safety Design

John Roberts puts his money where his mouth is. Literally.

Roberts, president and CEO of J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc. of Lowell, says the company values the safety component above all else. It’s why the trucking firm has been at the forefront of several industry safety issues, from the use of electronic logs to drug and alcohol testing measures for its drivers.

Roberts demonstrated that commitment to safety again, recently, when he announced that J.B. Hunt had purchased 4,000 new dry van trailers from Indiana-based Wabash National Corp., a publicly held company and one of the country’s leading manufacturers of semitrailers.

The trailers will have a new safety feature that is patented by Wabash National, specifically designed to reduce the risk of injury or death in so-called truck underride accidents, when cars go under the trailer of an 18-wheeler in a rear-impact collision.

With an industry cost estimate of $30,000 per unit, J.B. Hunt’s order from Wabash National totals $120 million.

Dana Stelsel, a spokeswoman for Wabash National, said J.B. Hunt is the only Arkansas-based customer to order the new RIG-16 Rear Underride Guard System to date.

“We’re proud to be the first fleet to specify the new rear impact guard design, and we applaud Wabash National’s leadership and advancements in rear impact protection,” Roberts said in a company news release.

Production of the trailers for J.B. Hunt began in January. A company spokeswoman did not say how often new trailers are ordered, and that a purchase of 4,000 at once is not standard.

“Typically, J.B. Hunt trailer orders are not that large since we order as needed to maintain our fleet,” said communications manager Carrie Johnson. “Orders are placed as often as necessary.”

Johnson declined to say how many dry van trailers J.B. Hunt owns, but according to the firm’s FY 2015 earnings release, J.B. Hunt operates more than 108,000 trailers and containers across its intermodal (78,957), dedicated (21,672) and truck (7,604) business segments combined, making it one of the largest transportation logistics providers in North America.

Shannon Newton, president of the Arkansas Trucking Association, said that it’s no surprise to her that J.B. Hunt would be out front as an early adopter of the new trailer technology.

“They are great corporate citizens, and the incorporation of these safer trailers is just another example of that,” she said.

The new rear impact guard design option is in a limited manufacturing phase, but Wabash National officials say production will ramp up over the next 18 months.

“Our work in the rear impact guard, and trailer performance in general, isn’t finished,” company president and CEO Dick Giromini said. “Innovation is ongoing.”

Understanding Underride

Of all the kinds of truck accidents, underrides are possibly the most dangerous.

Underrides take place when an automobile, especially a small passenger car, contacts the rear of a truck trailer with enough speed to force the car to slide under the bottom of the trailer. 

When a vehicle crashes into the back of a truck to the extent that the trailer bed crashes through the windshield and enters the vehicle’s passenger cabin, the results can be severe, and possibly fatal, for the vehicle’s occupants.

The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that each year there are about 400 deaths from cars hitting the backs of commercial 18 wheelers.

To protect against this kind of accident, the NHTSA says trailers “should be equipped with a rear impact guard that is low enough to guarantee engagement with the rigid structures of even the smallest passenger cars, wide enough to assure contact in off-center impacts and strong enough to arrest the motion of the passenger vehicle before its compartment area reaches the trailer bed.”

The bottom of a trailer is about 45 inches off the ground, at least, according to the NHTSA. But, the highest point of the front end of most passenger cars is only about 30 inches off the ground.

Most trailers and semitrailers are already required to have two bars — or rear impact guards — hanging down from the back of the trailer to prevent underride accidents.

But research from Virginia-based Truck Safety Coalition, a national agency that advocates for stronger regulations, suggests underride guard failures are due to poor design, since currently the underride guard is only mandatory on the back of truck trailers.

“I am glad that J.B. Hunt is equipping their trailers with an improved rear guard,” TSC volunteer and underride advocate Nancy Mueleners said. “Introductions of rear guards using new engineering approaches are a much-needed safety improvement that will prevent injuries and save lives.”

In its lobbying effort for improved safety, the TSC is partnering with the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety to sponsor a roundtable discussion on May 5 to discuss truck underride crashes. Researchers, government officials and industry leaders will attend to explore the scope of the problem and how regulation and voluntary action can help address it. 

New Technology

After nearly 10 years of research and development focused on improving rear impact guard performance, Wabash National introduced its new technology at the American Trucking Association’s Technology and Maintenance Council annual meeting in February.

Wabash National’s new design features two additional vertical posts, made of advanced, high-strength steel, and a longer, reinforced bumper tube, all of which, the company says, are designed to absorb energy better and deflect rear impact at any point along the bumper, and not just directly in the middle of truck trailers, which only happens in a small number of cases.

Reducing the number of people killed or injured in underride accidents, and addressing road safety performance as a whole, is a constant priority for the NHTSA. Just last December, in fact, the agency proposed that all trucking companies should be required to install stronger rear guards on their trailers.

Rear impact guard designs, the agency said, should be strong enough to protect vehicle passengers in crashes of up to 35 mph, the same requirements used in Canada. The current U.S. standard is 30 mph.

“A key component of our safety mission is ensuring that trucking — an essential part of America’s transportation system — operates not just efficiently, but safely,” NHTSA administrator Mark Rosekind wrote for the U.S. Department of Transportation’s “Fastlane” blog. “And this is just the latest step to help prevent or mitigate crashes involving commercial trucks and passenger vehicles.”