127USD per Barrel of Crude Oil - Record High.

One major area where environmental concerns marry with fiscal issues: Trucking.

125,000lb / 55,000kg of Sound, Lighting, Video, Band Gear, Office and Catering equipment needs to be moved between every show. Shying away from the American tradition of just rolling equipment onto an empty truck, our 5 trucks are efficiently packed, requiring more labour time and some tetris skill to make the most of our space and weight limits. We don't have a huge number of trucks compared to super group stadium shows that turn in to 36+ truck monsters, but even our 5 still have an impact on the environment.

In our initial planing for the US tour, we looked into moving all the equipment by rail. The American rail system isn't bad and every major city has a station. Problems come up, however, when stations don't have sidings and trains can only pull up for a few minutes to load and unload passengers. Freight timetables are set months in advance; we have too much gear to take advantage of spare capacity and not enough to command a 50 wagon freight train.

So, back to trucking it is. Fuel used on the road is inevitable, but the tradition of idling engines to maintain cab power and air conditioning can be addressed.

Truck Drivers live in their cabs. Some are luxury palaces, but all can be uncomfortable sweat boxes in the summer heat. With safety at the top of the priority list, ensuring the truckers get a good night sleep is key, so asking them not to run their AC is not an option. In a move to save fuel, more and more trucking companies are installing Auxiliary Power Units (APU's). Small generators mounted to the side of the cab deliver the required power instead of idling the engine. These can be run whenever the units are parked, saving on fuel and engine hours (servicing etc etc).

We have partnered with Upstaging Trucking to go one step further. There is more than enough house electricity when parked at the venue. Mains connectors and inverters have been installed to our 5 trucks to enable them to be hooked up to venue power and remove the need to run their APU's at all.

For the first time, complete silence and clean air at the loading dock.

The cost saving as the price of fuel continues to rise is clear, and we are also reducing emissions. A win-win solution and the best we could come up with, at least until those Hybrid trucks are developed!

www.upstaging.com