It's not exactly a secret that larger vehicles use more gasoline than smaller ones, and medium-duty trucks are in the gas guzzler group, and despite improvements, customer satisfaction has not improved in the past year. J.D. Power and Associates' 2012 U.S. Medium-Duty Truck Customer Satisfaction Study indicates that driver satisfaction in this vehicle class remained unchanged from 2011 – 757 points out of 1,000. The lack of change in satisfaction is somewhat surprising, as fuel economy across the class averaged 12 percent improvements in the past year. The report indicates this may have a lot to do with increased costs for consumers.<\/p>\n
"Even with advances in fuel economy and quality, the cost to manage truck fleets continues to increase, negatively impacting satisfaction," said Brent Gruber, director of the commercial vehicle practice at J.D. Power and Associates. "Higher fuel and truck prices have impacted satisfaction, pushing principal maintainers to look at other cost savings options. However, they have concerns regarding new alternative fuel technology."<\/p>\n