Brown expands green fleet

ATLANTA — UPS is adding 306 alternative fuel vehicles to its “green fleet” by placing an order for 167 Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) delivery trucks while taking delivery of 139 new propane delivery trucks in North America.

Additionally, the company has launched an initiative to use biodiesel fuel in its ground support vehicles at the UPS Worldport air hub in Louisville, Ky.

The CNG trucks will be deployed early next year in Dallas, Atlanta and four California cities. They will join more than 800 such vehicles already in use in the United States. The propane vehicles are joining nearly 600 propane trucks already operating in Canada and Mexico.

“While there’s a great deal of interest in the research we’re doing with new types of hybrids, 70 years of testing alternative fuel vehicles has taught us there are multiple technologies that can effectively reduce our dependence on fossil fuels as well as our carbon footprint,” said Robert Hall, UPS’s director of vehicle engineering. “Adding this many propane and CNG vehicles is going to have a very positive impact.”

UPS’s global alternative-fuel fleet now stands at 1,629 vehicles — the largest such private fleet in the transportation industry, the company says.

The propane and CNG trucks currently in the UPS fleet were converted from gasoline and diesel vehicles in the 1980s to run on alternative fuels. The new trucks are originally manufactured for alternative fuel use.

The chassis for the CNG trucks are being purchased in two sizes from Freightliner Custom Chassis Corp. The trucks will feature engines from Vancouver-based Cummins Westport that are expected to yield a 20 percent emissions reduction and 10 percent improvement in fuel economy over the cleanest diesel engines available in the market today. The truck bodies will be identical externally to the signature-brown trucks that now make up the UPS fleet and will be marked as CNG vehicles.

The UPS propane vehicles will run on liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) provided at eight on-site fueling stations at UPS facilities in Canada. LPG is derived from petroleum during oil or natural gas processing and is cleaner-burning than regular gasoline.

While continuing to develop its alternative fuel fleet, the company also has purchased and is operating nearly 20,000 low-emission conventional vehicles. These vehicles have regular gas- and diesel-powered engines but employ the very latest technology and manufacturing techniques to reduce emissions as much as possible.