United Parcel Service, one of the world’s largest express delivery companies, is moving into natural gas as a substitute for increasingly expensive diesel fuel for its over-the-road trucks.
According to an article in the New York Times many trucking companies,
“burdened by diesel prices that topped out at over $5 a gallon in 2008 and mindful of the sustained collapse of natural gas prices, are expressing new interest in liquefied natural gas for their thirstiest trucks, the over-the-road 18-wheelers.”
The director of maintenance and engineering at United Parcel Service, Michael G. Britt Sr. echoed what T. Boone Pickens has said since the introduction of the Pickens Plan saying, “It’s the only long-term viable option to diesel.”
According to the article,
“UPS is about to add 48 L.N.G. trucks and would like to deploy many more, if the fueling infrastructure is in place and if truck production volume rises enough to bring down costs. Many other companies are [also] running test fleets.”
The trucks will utilize engines which, like diesel-powered engines do not use spark plugs. “Compression-ignited engines are more efficient than spark-ignited engines, so they get more work out of a given amount of fuel,” the article states.
LNG-powered trucks are not new. According to the NY Times
“The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, Calif., run about 1,000 trucks on liquefied natural gas, but outside of that, only about 300 others are running around the country, according to Clean Energy, a company that supplies compressed and liquefied gas.”
UPS’ big-rig fleet is about 17,000 trucks and would like to switch more of them to LNG. As the number of 18-wheelers running on liquefied natural gas continues to grow, so will the refueling infrastructure to handle them.
Other major companies – among them Fed Ex, AT&T and Verizon – are showing leadership in replacing trucks which run on diesel largely imported from OPEC to domestic transportation fuels.
In the meantime, according to the Times,
“the company’s demonstration fleet, 11 vehicles shuttling between Ontario, Calif., and Las Vegas, has shown that the trucks can handle the most demanding situations, like hauling multiple trailers over mountain ranges, U.P.S. says.”
To read entire article UPS’ interest in LNG trucks, click HERE.
— The PickensTeam