Each season, we dress ourselves for whatever the weather conditions may be. Obviously in spring and summer, we wear lighter clothing and in the wintertime, we put on heavier clothing to stay warm.
When it comes to our trucking equipment, we often outfit the truck and trailer to meet winters harsh demands. Two common items we may add would be a “winter front” and “tire chains.” In addition to these, it is practical to use a traction type tire tread.
When it comes to aerodynamics, there are things you can do throughout the year to obtain maximum fuel efficiency. However, these added items to your equipment 
may not be practical for the wintertime season. Therefore, many drivers will decide not to add these features for this reason. Let’s take for example the Freightliner Innovation Cascadia Concept Truck which was on display at Mid-America a few years ago. This truck had many cutting edge aerodynamic features. One of those was the chin spoiler and fully covered and skirted drive tires. The discussion amongst drivers was that these features were great, however not very practical for use in the snow. The chin spoiler would most likely get destroyed and the skirted drive tires would clog up with ice and snow. Also, having the drive tires fully covered would make it nearly impossible to install tire chains. The tire chain issue could possibly be solved using On-Spot automatic tire chains.
Let’s look at this realistically as the winter season is only three to four months long. How many items such as the above features could be a benefit for the other eight to nine months of the year? Could we make items such as chin spoilers and fully covered drive tires affective so they could easily be removable? If they were easy to take off, we could put them in storage for the winter months and then reinstall them for the other eight to nine months of the year.
I am looking at this the same way I view my own personal wardrobe. In the summer, I store my winter clothes away for the next year. When spring arrives, I unpack my light weight clothes and put them into my drawers. We already outfit our trucks for the winter months; maybe we need to go a step further in order to maximize our fuel efficiency.