Based in Mississauga, Ontario, C8 Energy is a Canadian equipment distributor for the heavy-duty vehicle industry and is the exclusive supplier of SkelStart in Canada and distributor to North America. Their mission is to provide a greener, more efficient energy solution for the heavy-duty vehicle industry, both on and off road.
The founder and president of C8 Energy Jean Labrie has been involved in the heavy-duty vehicle market for over 30 years. Around two years ago while visiting a fleet, he saw pallets of lead-acid batteries that needed to be shipped out for recycling. “Gee-whiz, that's huge!” I told my friend to which he replied it’s nothing out of the ordinary. “It's like this every month.” That particular fleet had 700 tractors and replacing lead-acid batteries was their third biggest operational expense,” says Labrie.
Escalation of a historic problem
The problem has been a long time coming. Batteries’ short lifespan and vulnerability to extreme weather conditions have always been of concern, argues Labrie.
“Diagnosing battery health, dealing with corrosion on their pole or treads, needing road services for jump-starting the engine, oversizing the battery pack to guarantee reliable ignition – these have always been major issues and still are. In that regard, nothing significant has changed for decades.”
