UPS may look stodgy with its brown trucks and brown uniforms, but it is increaasingly showing itself to be an eco-friendly innovator. The New York Times Magazine looks at one of its earth-friendly innovations, the use of software to plan delivery routes that involve as few left turns as possible.
Writer Joel Lovell says the company realized that “when you operate a gigantic fleet of vehicles, tiny improvements in the efficiency of each one will translate to huge savings overall,” and deployed “package flow” software to pre-plot delivery sequences for its 95,000 vehicles. The payoff is significant:
Last year, according to Heather Robinson, a U.P.S. spokeswoman, the software helped the company shave 28.5 million miles off its delivery routes, which has resulted in savings of roughly three million gallons of gas and has reduced CO2 emissions by 31,000 metric tons.
Eliminating as many left turns from your daily travels won’t save you millions of miles of travel or millions of gallons of gas, but at $3 a gallon, every little bit helps. Plus, left turns are often a pain. Think about your regular routes.
