UPS Completes Deployment of 300 New “Green” Trucks

-(BUSINESS WIRE)--UPS (NYSE: UPS) yesterday announced it had deployed 300 new delivery trucks powered by Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) to seven cities in Colorado, Georgia, Oklahoma and California.

The CNG vehicles, part of an order placed last May, will allow UPS to further reduce its dependence on traditional fossil fuels like gasoline and diesel and lower its carbon footprint. UPS already operates the largest private fleet of alternative fuel vehicles in its industry – 1,819 in total with these additions.

The new CNG trucks have been deployed over the past month to Denver (43); Atlanta (46); Oklahoma City (100), and four cities in California: Sacramento (21), San Ramon (63), Los Angeles (9) and Ontario (18). All now are in service.

“Deploying alternative fuel vehicles dates back to the early days of UPS and this CNG deployment is one more step towards the greening of our fleet,” said Robert Hall, UPS’s director of vehicle engineering. “Continuing to add CNG delivery trucks to our fleet is a sustainable choice because natural gas is a cost effective, clean-burning and readily available fuel.”

UPS first began deploying trucks powered by CNG in the 1980s, purchasing traditional gas- or diesel-driven vehicles and then converting them to run on compressed gas. The 300 trucks deployed over the past month were built from scratch as CNG vehicles. They join more than 800 CNG vehicles already in use by UPS worldwide.

The CNG truck bodies are identical externally to the signature-brown trucks that comprise the UPS fleet. Marked with decals as CNG vehicles, the trucks are expected to yield a 20 percent emissions reduction over the cleanest diesel engines available in the market today.

For its alternative fuel fleet, UPS has deployed CNG, Liquefied Natural Gas, propane, electric and hybrid electric vehicles in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Germany, France, Brazil, Chile, Korea and the United Kingdom. The company recently announced the purchase of seven hydraulic hybrid delivery vehicles, a first in the industry, and has conducted research with hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.

UPS began deploying alternative fuel vehicles in the 1930s with a fleet of electric trucks that operated in New York City. Just since 2000, the company’s “green fleet” has traveled 144 million miles.

“Deploying eco-friendly delivery vehicles is one of the many ways UPS demonstrates its commitment to sustainable business practices,” added Hall. “The company plans to continue to expand its ‘green fleet’ and to focus deployments in areas with air quality challenges.”

UPS pursues a wide range of socially responsible and sustainable business practices designed to reduce its impact on the environment and improve communities around the world. UPS is included in the Dow Jones and FTSE4Good Sustainability Indexes, which evaluate corporations based on economic, environmental and social criteria. Learn more about UPS's responsible business practices at www.sustainability.ups.com.

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