HMD Trucking Built a 700-Truck Diesel Fleet. Now It’s Buying 50 Tesla Semi Trucks.

I’m sitting at the Tesla Semi launch event next to a fit gentleman wearing a white, long-sleeve shirt with a large HMD logo on the chest and an even larger IWC watch on his wrist. With him are several people in matching shirts, so I’m guessing he and his team are here as customers, ready to take delivery of some of Tesla’s all-new, all-electric Class 8 semi-trucks.

Indeed, that’s exactly what Henry Malukas is here to do. Twenty-eight years ago, he and his wife, Daiva, founded HMD Trucking, Inc. “When we started, it stood for ‘hungry man driving,’ but not anymore,” Malukas said with a laugh.

Malukas estimates he’s driven over a million miles as a driver and owner/operator of his own trucking business. During those intervening 28 years, HMD has grown from a husband-wife team with one truck to a $250 million company with nearly 700 big rigs and more than 1,000 employees spread across Illinois and Indiana.

As successful business owners often do, he and his wife have also taken up racing under the banner of HMD Motorsports, which operates its own successful IndyCar NXT team (NXT is IndyCar’s developmental series). Their son, David Malukas, now races for Team Penske in the top-level IndyCar Series. Earlier this year, David made headlines around the world by finishing second to Felix Rosenqvist in the closest ever Indy 500 finish in the legendary race’s history.

“It was heartbreaking. Broke his heart. Broke our hearts,” said Henry.

Tesla Semi Makes Business Sense?

Malukas said HMD Trucking is buying 50 Tesla Semis. He can’t tell me the price (we’ve heard rumors that they’re around $300,000 apiece), but whatever it is, he’s all in on the potential $15 million investment HMD’s making in Tesla’s all-electric big rigs.

“It’s an amazing product. It’s efficient, low maintenance, also the fuel cost,” Malukas said. “It’s unbelievable. And for the driver, I think it’s a dream come true. Yeah, it’s like nothing we’ve ever seen, and I don’t think anybody is going to see for a while, anything like that. It’s just going to be next level.”

This comes from an operator of Class 8 trucks whose fleet is presently composed of 99 percent Peterbilt-brand, diesel-powered models. Malukas believes electric big-rigs like the Tesla Semi will eventually replace them all.

“100 percent,” Malukas continued. “It works for a long haul; any kind of trucking, for any kind of use; it’s going to be electric. I think for the [electric] cars, when they came out, people had a preference; they had their emotional attachments. Here, when this rolls out to businesses, when they understand what it does, and the costs and all that stuff, that will take off in the market because there are no emotions. The owners of the company look at the bottom line, and we’re going to excel at the next level. I mean, this is a miracle in my eyes.”

When asked about how the Semi will work in his operation, how his drivers will handle the maximum of 500 miles of hauling range and charge the enormous 850-ish-kWh battery packs, Malukas is confident he’ll be able to use Tesla’s growing network of Megachargers, which are capable of delivering up to 1.2 megawatts of energy, as well as his own network of chargers that his company is currently setting up in Chicago.

With diesel fuel prices surging to all-time highs, it seems like perfect timing for Tesla to launch the Semi. But Malukas isn’t as fixated on the volatility of fuel prices and the cost savings of electrical power. For HMD, the savings are in maintenance and operating costs.

“We don’t have real numbers yet,” he said, “but based on what I’m hearing, [Tesla Semi] should be much cheaper on fuel. But besides that, just the maintenance side, changing oils … we have to do so much stuff, I’m not even talking about fixing, but just maintaining the diesel vehicle. We have so much involved in that; trucks of oil, it’s a lot of stuff that needs to be done to deliver the loads.”

Bring on the Cold, Ship the Peanut Butter

The real revelation in talking to Malukas came when he brought up the demands of trucking in the depths of winter, and how in some ways, electric big rigs could be a game changer.

“In the wintertime, we get to 10 below zero or even 20 below,” Malukas said. “And it’s not much different than 100 years ago; we’re still running with 20 people in the yard with fires [to keep them warm] to help start the trucks. Or we have the trucks running overnight. This Semi is going to change that big time. I mean, you just open your app, you set the temperature for your cab, 72 degrees or whatever you prefer, and you drive away. There’s no more need for a full crew to make sure the truck starts or to put the additives in the diesel. Otherwise, they’re going to gel up, the diesel gels up as you drive. In wintertime, it’s very complicated. Semi will take it all away. It’s going to be so much easier, just to leave your location, and you don’t have to worry about not being able to start the truck.”

We’ve long heard and understood that one of the major challenges for electric vehicles is the cold of winter, as the overall driving range is reduced due to the energy required to keep the battery and accessory systems warm. So we challenged Malukas on his assertion that electric Semis will be better able to withstand brutally cold temperatures. His response:

“If it’s cold outside and we have our own charging station, we would have our trucks plugged in. The battery is being charged and preheated, so that we would not lose much range. Now, if you keep the truck outside, not plugged in, and it stays out overnight, and you get in the truck and drive away, the first half hour, you lose like 20 percent of battery charge to preheat everything. You lose some range, but it’s much easier to lose the range than to have all these people around to make sure we’re able to start the diesel trucks or let them idle all night. We have to have security guards for the yard, all the people … there’s a lot involved until five or six in the morning before the trucks pull out to deliver the peanut butter. Because it’s very important, you know, everybody needs to have their peanut butter!”

Semi Game Changer

We chatted with Malukas after taking an extended tour through the new Tesla Semi factory in Sparks, Nevada. Malukas has toured big-rig diesel truck factories in the past, and he came away impressed by what Tesla’s accomplished, particularly in the way it’s cutting Semi manufacturing costs by repurposing proven parts from other Telsa vehicles. You see, Malukas has 19 other reasons why he believes Semi will be a success, and that’s the 19 Tesla products he’s purchased since 2012 and his first Model S. To underline his point, Malukas opened the Tesla app on his phone and showed me all the Model S, X, 3, Y, and Cybertrucks he’s purchased over the years, along with the other Tesla products he installed in his homes, from Power Wall storage batteries to the elusive and recently discontinued solar roof tiles.

Malukas hasn’t sold any of the Tesla cars and trucks he’s purchased and claims he’s only had one battery and one motor “go bad.” This kind of track record over the last 14 years makes Malukas a true believer in Tesla’s Semi.

“I test-drove the thing, and it’s a dream,” he said. “This is a game changer that’s coming, 100 percent. And I hope everybody else will catch up to give Tesla some competition. But right now, everybody is far behind.”