UPS continues major natural gas-related transportation investments

Continuing its sustained push on the natural gas front, UPS said this week its has invested $100 million towards building 12 new compressed natural gas (CNG) fueling stations and adding 380 new CNG trailers for its alternative fuel and advanced technology fleet.

“At UPS, we own our fleet and our infrastructure,” said Mark Wallace, UPS senior vice president global engineering and sustainability, in a statement. “That allows us to invest for the long-term, rather than planning around near-term fluctuations in fuel pricing,” said Mark Wallace, UPS senior vice president global engineering and sustainability. “CNG is part of a broad investment in a variety of alternative fuel vehicles. Taken together, all of our alternative fuel vehicles represent 6 percent of the more than 100,000 UPS global fleet, and have driven a 10 percent annual reduction in use of conventional fuel.”

UPS said the new fueling stations will be built by TruStar Energy and be located in Amarillo, Texas; Chattanooga, Tenn.; Columbia, S.C.; El Paso, Texas; Fort Worth, Texas; Kansas City, Kan.; Phoenix, Ariz.; Reno, Nev.; San Antonio, Texas; Tifton, Ga.; Trinidad, Colo., and Willow Grove, Pa.  And it added that the new CNG tractors to be deployed in these cities will be manufactured by Kenworth,with Agility and Quantum Fuel Systems providing the CNG storage systems.

UPS said this investment builds on the its existing 18 CNG fueling stations in Alabama, California, Colorado, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia and operates CNG vehicles in Germany, the Netherlands and Thailand.

In this announcement, UPS also noted it is committed to meeting its goal of logging one billion miles with its alternative fuel and advanced technology fleet by the end of 2017, with a Rolling Laboratory approach used to determine the right alternative fuel solutions to meet the varied needs of route-specific driving environments.

In April 2015, UPS said it planned to build 15 compressed natural gas fueling stations in an effort to support the purchase and planned deployment of 1,400 new CNG vehicles over the next year (2016).

The company said that 2015 investment was a 30 percent increase to its current alternative fuel and advanced technology global fleet comprised of 5,508 vehicles at that time, adding that the fueling stations, of which 12 will be in new natural gas deployment areas, and vehicle purchases have multiple drivers, including: an ongoing commitment to diversify fuel sources; implement a fleet infrastructure that can utilize lower carbon intensity fuel sources; and increase experience using alternative fuels in freight transport applications.

UPS Sustainability PR Manager Kristen Petrella told LM that when the company makes the decision to deploy natural gas vehicles in a specific location, it evaluates the fuel infrastructure options.

“Each location is evaluated separately,” she explained.  “The decision to build our own station on property is primarily due to the fact that we are deploying enough vehicles to fully utilize the station.  Having our own station on site also ensures that we have complete and unfettered access to the station when needed, and with many of our natural gas trucks being dual utilized on more than one route per day, we often are limited in the amount of time we have to refuel between dispatches.  The planning stages of these individual projects vary from 6-to-12 months.  Each deployment project in this group of 15 has its own individual characteristics and there are a lot of moving parts to consider.”