BrownCafe

My heart is racing as I’m banking a hard right, flying a few hundred feet above downtown Louisville in an Airbus A300.

The sensation was a blend of familiar and foreign.

I’ve been on enough flights to know the sound and feel of the engines as they rev up and down; the slight rumble as the aircraft descends; and that sinking feeling you get in your stomach when it changes altitude too fast. What was foreign to me was the seat I was in: The left seat of the cockpit. I had the yoke in my sweaty hands, hundreds of dials, monitors and buttons in front of me.

For almost a decade, commercial-fleet managers have acknowledged that electric truck are much cheaper to run per mile than the diesel equivalents they now use.

But justifying the purchase of electric trucks has been a challenge because their upfront costs have been considerably higher.

That may now have changed, according to no less a fleet operator than United Parcel Service.