This month, the White House announced the first-ever fuel efficiency standards for heavy trucks — heavy pick-ups, work vans and trucks (think the Frito-Lay delivery guy), and tractor-trailers. The people who make these behemoths have never had to think about fuel economy before, but now they do. And there's lots of room for improvement. As Fast Company writes:
A rectangular metal box, it turns out, may be the worst possible shape to haul down the highway at high speeds. It's a fashion show of new forms on the road: trailer skirts, trailer tails, and "SuperSingles" all designed to reduce the wind resistance sucking the efficiency out of America's freight shipping fleet.
Trailer skirts are basically panels that hang between the wheels. Trailer tails, though, are much more awesome: they're basically origami-like truck butts (see above) that make trucks just a teeny bit more graceful.
