Trailer Refrigeration Taken to Next Level with Advancer, Claims Thermo King

With fully variable airflow, unrivalled fuel efficiency, and a significantly lowered cost of ownership, the Advancer represents the future of trailer refrigeration. That’s the claim made today by Thermo King at the launch of what it calls “a disruptive new re-imagining of the trailer refrigeration unit”.

The Advancer A-Series is available in three different versions, the A-360, A-400, and A-500, and offers an all-new design architecture that creates a bold new standard for performance, temperature control, and fleet connectivity.

“At Thermo King, we understand that with being a leader comes the responsibility to advance the technology and capability for refrigerated transport. Since we started the industry over 80 years ago, we have been innovating to meet and exceed customer needs, improve efficiency and reduce the environmental footprint of our products,” said Francesco Incalza, president of Thermo King Europe, Middle East and Africa. “Today, Advancer adds another milestone to our history. By introducing this completely redesigned trailer platform, we are challenging what is possible in our industry. This is our vision for the future of trailer refrigeration, and this future is now here for our customers.”

The ambition behind Advancer is to move beyond incremental enhancements and to create a trailer refrigeration unit that features innovations never before seen on the market. Equally, the performance delivered by the A-Series is unrivalled, featuring groundbreaking temperature control, superior load protection, and unmatched fuel efficiency. Combined, these capabilities deliver greater operational flexibility, while helping customers achieve significant improvements in fleet uptime and total cost of ownership.

“With Advancer we went back to the drawing board and asked ourselves what does the future look like?” said David O’Gorman, senior product manager, Thermo King. “We asked customers to tell us what they needed to work better, to win more business, and to cut their cost of operation. The result is a game changing solution we believe our customers are waiting for.”

The field trial testing the units in real life conditions and comparison tests against the predecessor and other flagship refrigeration units have shown that Advancer is up to 40 percent quicker to pull down and up to 30 percent more fuel-efficient than the market average.

“Our field trial units travelled over 1 million kilometres across different climate zones and counted tens of thousands of running hours in diesel and electric modes,” added O’Gorman. “They have crossed deserts, operated at high altitudes, travelled on ferries to cross the seas and on trains for intermodal operations. Throughout the tests, the Advancer units proved to be trouble free.”

The new architecture incorporates the expectations of customers that were gathered in detail and factored into the design from the outset, along with decades of Thermo King’s knowledge and experience. As a result, Advancer includes unique features that comprehensively address a wide range of operational and financial challenges, including:

• Fully variable airflow that can be regulated for each journey and cargo, and is independent from unit engine speed
• Unrivalled electrical and fuel efficiency contributing to lower CO2 footprint and engines with 50 percent less emissions than the maximum allowed by latest NRMM Stage V emission standards
• Electronic engine speed control on the A-400 and A-500 units, which makes them the first units on the market to give complete transparency of fuel levels and fuel consumption. The fuel consumption data will be recorded, displayed, and made available remotely via telematics
• Lower maintenance costs and enhanced serviceability compared to the predecessor, thanks to sensors offering more insight into the engine, fuel, battery and the performance of other key components.
• Future-ready power agnostic capabilities that can utilize diesel, axle generator, or shore power sources with ease
• Fleet intelligence as standard, with Advancer being the first-ever unit to offer 2 years of full telematics connectivity in the purchase price.

The Advancer units are manufactured in the Thermo King’s zero waste to landfill plant in Galway, Ireland. The newly designed, state-of-the-art production line uses 60 percent less energy than the production process of previous Thermo King trailer products.

Advancer aligns with Trane Technologies’ 2030 sustainability aspirations, and the commitment to reduce customers’ carbon emissions by one gigaton – equivalent to the annual emissions of Italy, France and the United Kingdom combined.