Minnesota-based refuse and recycling company Ace Solid Waste Inc. has partnered with Vocational Energy, a firm specializing in compressed natural gas (CNG) refueling stations, to begin shifting some of its 60-truck fleet from diesel to natural gas.

First on Ace's agenda was creating adequate fueling infrastructure on-site to accommodate its fleet. Vocational Energy, a part of the Trucks.com family of companies, fulfilled that requirement by building a time-fill CNG station configured to fuel up to 40 trucks simultaneously overnight.

The station uses a PSB Industries Inc. dryer and ANGI Energy Systems Inc. compressor technology. Vocational Energy built proprietary fuel posts for the installation, and the nozzles are from Staubli.

Vocational Energy's Jeffry Swertfeger tells NGT News that it took about six months to finish the station, which Ace funded independently - no grants or other assistance were used to finance the project.

So far, Ace has deployed four Autocar Xpeditor natural gas trucks that feature the 8.9-liter ISL G engine from Cummins Westport. The company plans on adding four or five new units each year over the next five years.