With the retirement of the Crown Victoria now over and done with, Ford is unveiling their new Explorer and Taurus police cruisers, which will save police fleets with 100 vehicles $153,000 in gas costs alone per year. Auto transportation companies don’t often ship police vehicles, but they’re gearing up for the fleet restocks that many departments across the country will be doing over the next few years. This is good new for police departments as well, as their overhead budgets just got slashed by a lot of percentage points. With maintenance on the vehicles now less than it was on the Crown Victoria, this too will help save money on overhead, meaning more money for actual police officers and keeping the people – and the highways that auto shippers use – safe.

As electric cars and hybrid vehicles continue to make waves, the future of hydrogen as a source of fuel for our cars has been a rocky one, but automakers aren’t ready to give up on the technology just yet. Several different automakers are working on new hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, and they use a form of electrolysis instead of storing the fuel in the batteries. This is good for consumers, as charge times are much quicker (not to mention fuel costs cheaper), but current costs and infrastructure requirements are making it difficult for automobile makers to produce cars available for the general public. This isn’t stopping them from forging ahead, something that the auto shipping industry appreciates, as diesel prices are continuing to skyrocket as we head into the winter months. Electric technology hasn’t produced anything that could haul ten thousand pounds or more, but hydrogen may have the answer. We’ll soon see, and we’ll be sure to follow this story as it develops.

The Ram 2500 Heavy Duty CNG runs on both gasoline and compressed natural gas, with the vehicle using gasoline upon startup and switching to CNG after about two minutes or so. Why is this significant, you ask? Well, the 2500 HD CNG can drive up to 367 miles on one fill-up for both tanks, which is a feat rarely achieved by such a large truck. Auto transport companies have long been wanting an alternative energy source that can reduce how much they pay for fuel, but with most manufacturers putting emphasis on electric vehicles as opposed to more powerful alternatives, many auto transporters have started to give up hope on a diesel alternative. Seeing CNG back in the running like this is a good first step at lowering overhead for transporters – and lowering the price that customers pay for auto shipping.

With the recent rise in luxury pickup trucks, consumers are hopping on the idea like white on rice, offering more luxurious pickup truck models than have ever been seen before. Auto transporters who haul big trucks have seen the rise in “pretty” pickup trucks, and some of them scratch their head as to why exactly someone would need something that large if they aren’t towing anything. Though the trucks can cost over $50,000 in some cases, people see them as a status symbol of sorts. This blogger sees it as a way to act manly without getting your hands dirty. I’m sorry, but if you buy a pickup truck, please have a need for it. If you don’t, you get a man card revoked, end of story.

The Ford Motor Company, since the global financial crisis began in 2008, has built its reputation on good cars, good service and dependability. Their consumer confidence numbers have risen steadily over the past three years, but the company’s image is in jeopardy thanks to papers filed with the U.S. District Court in New Jersey, which accuses the company of not only having a defect in the fuel tanks of F-Series trucks and vans built from 1999-2008, but that they knew about it and did nothing. This is a major problem, but one that has remained relatively quiet, and auto transporters haven’t noticed any major chances in the number of Ford vehicles being shipped from dealerships. Maybe Ford can pull off something similar to what they did a few years ago, when other problems arose that were like Toyota’s regenerative braking problems. Or maybe not. Only time will tell.