UPS calculates that it avoided driving 63.5 million miles last year saving about 68,000 tonnes of greenhouses gases, according to its annual Sustainability Report.
UPS’s US package volume rose 1.8 per cent in 2010, but it reduced the amount of fuel consumed per package by 3.3 per cent.
It highlighted three technologies that have reduced fuel consumption:
* Routing technology, which enabled UPS to reduce the miles flown and driven.
* Loading optimisation so that more packages are being delivered with fewer vehicles on the road.
* Telematics, which provides data on how a vehicle performs mechanically as well as on a driver’s route and behavior behind the wheel. Telematics saved 15.4 million minutes of engine idling time in 2010.
Scott Wicker, UPS chief sustainability officer, said: “The data we gather from Telematics enables us to make small adjustments with big payoffs,” said Wicker. “For example, one of our metrics is ‘stops per mile’ which measures our ability to deliver more packages with fewer engine restarts. Increasing the number of stops per mile by just 0.01 per cent in 2010 was the equivalent of not driving 9.13 million miles.”