UPS plans to add more than 700 new compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles to its fleet and build an additional five fueling stations in Kansas, Indiana and Arizona, and two in Texas.
The US$130m investment includes 400 semi-tractors supplied by Freightliner and 330 terminal trucks by TICO. It builds on the company’s previous ‘Rolling Laboratory’ investments of US$100m in 2016 and US$90m in 2017, with more than US$1bn being invested in alternative fuel and advanced technology vehicles since 2008.
Carlton Rose, president, global fleet maintenance and engineering for UPS, said, “We strongly believe further investment in our natural gas fleet is a key element to help us achieve our long-term goals for reducing our CO2 emissions. We demonstrated the effectiveness of natural gas vehicles and fuel in 2017 by using 77 million total gallon equivalents in our ground fleet.”
The new vehicles will help UPS reach its goal of replacing 40% of all ground fuel with sources other than gasoline and diesel. These goals support UPS’s commitment to reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from global ground operations by 12% by 2025.
Building CNG and liquid natural gas (LNG) capacity is an important enabler for increasing UPS’s use of renewable natural gas (RNG). Last year, UPS used 15 million-gallon equivalents of RNG, making it the largest consumer in the transportation sector.