Some ideas are too good to stay on a napkin. Just ask Southwest Airlines founders Rollin King and Herb Kelleher, Ethernet inventor Robert Metcalfe, or BGE’s very own Andy Hedrick. Andy, a senior government and equipment compliance specialist, sketched plans for our electric dump truck – the first of its kind – on the back of a napkin during a trade show dinner in 2022.
Inspiration struck when Andy joined two of our vendors for dinner: Peterbilt, a truck manufacturer, and J&J, a dump truck body builder. Peterbilt sold an electric vehicle chassis – the structural foundation that supports the rest of the vehicle’s components. Despite this innovation, no companies offered an electric dump truck at the time. Could that change?
Andy thought so. By the time he left the table, he’d scribbled a plan to combine Peterbilt’s electric vehicle chassis and J&J’s dump truck body into an innovative electric dump truck – the very first in the utility industry.
Nobody had talked about doing an electric dump truck before.
That dinner was the first step of an exciting design process. Over the next year, napkin models turned into digital mockups, dinner table conversations turned into technical discussions with engineers from both companies, and Andy’s vision turned into reality.
The journey wasn’t seamless, though. While electric vehicles can look deceptively similar to their internal combustion counterparts on the road, their mechanics vary in several ways. Not only do electric vehicles have different power sources, but thanks to heavy batteries, an electric vehicle chassis weighs more than a diesel chassis. Andy and his team had to think critically to ensure that their electric dump truck could carry just as much weight as a diesel model.
The electric dump truck was built to work, not just to wow. With the payload capacity of a diesel truck and a range of about 200 miles, the final product is fully functional. According to Andy, it’s a pleasant driving experience too – the truck is quiet, rides smoothly, and accelerates quickly.
While the electric dump truck works as well as its diesel counterparts, it’s a standout in many ways. For one, refueling is far cheaper – filling a diesel dump truck typically costs around $275, but it costs just $50 to recharge the electric model.
The electric truck comes with environmental benefits, too. Using the electric dump truck allows us to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 59 tons each year and integrating it into our fleet also helps us reach one of our major goals: electrifying 30% of our fleet by the end of 2025.
Thanks to Andy, we’re the first utility company in the country to have an electric dump truck – and we won’t be the last. Our sister operating companies are considering adopting electric dump trucks, and this trend extends beyond the utility industry. Peterbilt released a bigger electric dump truck this year, which can be used in construction, and other manufacturers are following in their footsteps.
It’s the latest and greatest… but there’s more to come.
While we’re excited about this development, we know that’s not where our innovation journey ends. We’re committed to evolving, thinking big, and powering a greener future. From napkin sketches to industry firsts, we’re just getting started.
