How Hight Electric’s Charging Infrastructure Keeps EV Logistics Running Smoothly
When we made the commitment to provide drayage services, one of the first decisions we made at Hight Electric was to partner with Forum Mobility to build out our current EV charging infrastructure. We did so with full awareness of the challenges facing the electric-vehicle movement. One of the most significant hurdles – on a broad-scale basis – is the availability of charging infrastructure.
You’ve likely heard the horror stories of EV drivers attempting long road trips, only to struggle with the scarcity of charging stations or face lengthy wait times of up to 45 minutes to recharge. While that might be frustrating for personal travel, it’s simply not feasible in the world of logistics, where tight schedules and reliable deliveries are non-negotiable.
You can’t have that on the road, and you certainly can’t have that when you’re hauling goods from a port to a final destination on a tight schedule.
As our fleet grows, the infrastructure we have now will remain sufficient for the foreseeable future, but we do anticipate building out more charging stations to accommodate our growing fleet and its charging needs.
At present we have 20 trucks, and six charging stations available to keep them re-charged. Every Hight Electric truck is fully re-charged whenever it returns from a run. This ensures that every driver departs the port with a fully charged EV battery, ready to deliver a client’s freight.
Combined with the fact that we limit our EV runs to well within the known range of our batteries, our clients can count on several things:
- With Hight Electric, there will never be a delay from a driver having to search out a charging station or wait for a slow charge to finish. Every driver has enough power to before leaving our facility to complete the run.
- Because of the way we manage the use of our charging stations, we always have plenty of fully charged trucks ready to go.
- We meticulously maintain our charging infrastructure, so there is never a situation in which the charger is slow or holds up the process. With six charging stations, we have plenty of options in the event one charger needs attention.
- As our fleet grows, the infrastructure we have now will remain sufficient for the foreseeable future.
- Our terminal operations manager, Frank Castillo, has got this down to a science. He knows how important it is to keep all the trucks fully charged and ready to respond to any client need.
Never having to stop for fuel is great, but every vehicle needs some kind of power. We realized at the outset what kind of investment we would need to make our EV fleet effective enough to consistently meet our clients’ needs.
We made that investment, and we’ve had some challenges along the way. However, we have learned a lot in the process. Over time, our efforts, our focus and our investments are paying off exactly as we expected they would. And our clients are getting the greatest return on that investment.
