Yes, definitely.
We'll set aside whether we're talking about side guards or side skirts. I'm talking about side skirts, and there's no question that side skirts—you'll see them in our diagrams—do improve fuel economy.
Perhaps somebody has made a side skirt that can also be a guard. We're not aware of them here in Canada, although we've had some discussions about what they may or may not be doing in Europe. If someone could develop and bring to market here something that does both, that would be great.
However, there are a couple of other aspects. You're seeing more and more companies now investing in side-skirt technology when they're buying new trailers. As Claude said, a trailer lasts 20 years, so the turnover rate is slow, but more and more companies, when they buy new trailers now—and you'll see them out on the highways—have those side skirts.
We have to distinguish among the types of trailers and be clear about where the fuel economy can happen. It depends essentially on the type of van and on the kind of trailer. You can see in the diagram that there is a van type. There are all kinds—tank trailers, flat deck trailers, and those sorts of things—but the fuel economy savings for a van trailer operating at highway speeds are not in dispute. They have an impact.
What we would like to see and what we've been promoting for the last few years, under a program called enviroTruck, would be options for the industry. If you're operating a van trailer, there are certain things you can do; if you're operating a tank trailer, there are certain things you can do. One option would be a side skirt. You could retrofit your existing equipment to get the bang for the buck, in terms of the environment, more quickly.
One of the principal ways we thought that could be done was through a repayable grant. Sure, we'd love to have an outright grant, and there are lots of success stories in that connection. There used to be a program for auxiliary power units that had a real payback to government and to industry. It involved a very small investment on the part of government and a significant investment on the part of industry.
However, given the current times, we recognize that may be difficult, so a repayable grant system would help to create the capital that is not there right now.