UPS Canada goes from brown to green

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MISSISSAUGA, Ont. – UPS Canada will be rolling out 139 additional cleaner-burning, propane delivery trucks. The majority of these vehicles will be deployed in Quebec, Ontario and Alberta and the rest distributed between British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

The propane vehicles are joining roughly 600 propane trucks already operating in Canada. The addition of these vehicles means more than one-third of UPS Canada’s 2,000 package delivery vehicles will run on low-carbon fuel.

“UPS Canada has been a leader in deploying alternative fuel vehicles since 1985,” said UPS Canada vicepresident of automotive, Steve Clark. “This deployment demonstrates UPS’s continued commitment to running our business in a responsible manner.”

The 139 new propane trucks are expected to reduce UPS’s carbon dioxide emissions by a total of 254 metric tonnes per year, the equivalent weight of 80 UPS trucks.

This would be a 35% improvement compared to conventional gas engines. Additionally, particulate matter emitted from vehicles will be virtually eliminated, the company said.

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

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

The newly-added propane-powered vehicles feature the latest technology in clean-burning propane engines. Propane vehicles emit about one-third fewer reactive organic gases than gasoline-fuelled vehicles. Nitrogen oxide and carbon monoxide emissions are 20% and 60% less, respectively, than conventional vehicles.

UPS’s global alternative-fuel fleet now stands at 1,629 vehicles – the largest such private fleet in the transportation industry – and includes compressed natural gas, liquefied natural gas, propane and electric and hybrid-electric vehicles. UPS is also working with the US Environmental Protection Agency on a hydraulic hybrid delivery vehicle.

UPS began deploying alternative fuel vehicles in the 1930s with a fleet of electric trucks that operated in New York City. Since 2000 alone, the company’s “green fleet” has travelled 202 million kilometres.

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