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Scania, whose stand was dominated by its newly-launched range of EGR Euro 5 trucks, is another manufacturer to hedge its bets – researching numerous potential alternatives to diesel. "In fact, you give us a fuel and we will burn it," a spokesman says. Scania recently showed a hybrid bus to journalists, which has just gone into service in Sweden. Volvo is another manufacturer to explore various fuel types, and prides itself that it can produce trucks to run on either bio-diesel, bio-gas,  a bio-diesel/bio-gas combo, DME, hydrogen/bio-gas, methanol/ethanol, or synthetic diesel. "What we need now is some steer from the petrochemical companies and politicians," says Volvo’s Steve Kirk.

But in the meantime, Volvo used the RAI Show to prove that there is still a lot more than can be done to lower carbon footprints, while still using regular diesel. WH Malcolm is one of a handful of operators to take part in Volvo’s Fuelwatch – a scheme which sees Volvo use a mix of hardware and software to reduce a haulier’s fuel consumption. In the case of WH Malcolm, it fell by 7.5%.

Although there were no alternative-fuelled trucks on the MAN stand, various displays confirmed its commitment to the future of diesel, alternative fuels and hybrid technology. "The industry is yet to determine what the fuel of the future will be," says a spokesman, "and we are researching numerous potential avenues."