UPS deliveries reduce left hand turns, saves roughly three million gallons of gas

[sNyx]

Left-Hand-Turn Elimination

By JOEL LOVELL
Published: December 9, 2007

It seems that sitting in the left lane, engine idling, waiting for oncoming traffic to clear so you can make a left-hand turn, is minutely wasteful — of time and peace of mind, for sure, but also of gas and therefore money. Not a ton of gas and money if we’re talking about just you and your Windstar, say, but immensely wasteful if we’re talking about more than 95,000 big square brown trucks delivering packages every day. And this realization — that when you operate a gigantic fleet of vehicles, tiny improvements in the efficiency of each one will translate to huge savings overall — is what led U.P.S. to limit further the number of left-hand turns its drivers make.

The company employs what it calls a “package flow” software program, which among other hyperefficient practices involving the packing and sorting of its cargo, maps out routes for every one of its drivers, drastically reducing the number of left-hand turns they make (taking into consideration, of course, those instances where not to make the left-hand turn would result in a ridiculously circuitous route).

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. So what can Brown do for you? We can’t speak to how good or bad they are in the parcel-delivery world, but they won’t be clogging up the left-hand lane while they do their business.

[tiedye]

Intelligent business solutions like this are becoming more and more common these days. It's good to see the results in substantial numbers. Can you imagine what the benefits from this program will be in say, 10 years? It's a shame that it would be far too costly and impractical for such a company to turn to organic fuel alternatives such as bio-diesel; the resulting effects would be phenomenal.

[dabbler]

hey Myles, 2005 called and said "old news"



(I realize it's actually NY times fault, but seriously I heard about this well over a year ago)

[ebbomega]

Should probably also blame Digg for putting it at the top in the last 24 hours for news...

Dabbler: More connected than the internet.

[stephen_c]

we can save another 3 million gallons
if soccer moms push kids out moving mini-vans
instead of stoppin for hugs, kisses and 'have a good day'.
what a waste of gas.

[dabbler]

same day I also heard about some airline realizing that they usually just paint OVER the previous coat of paint, and so they stripped all the layers off their planes and saved millions on fuel

[sNyx]

My apologies to 2005, sheesh, I should have learned this sooner to stay on par. Well at least it's out in the open here on FNK; I am less Internet then Dabbles. Oh the egg on my face, let me tell you (well.. tell everyone but Dabbles, he already knew). :P

Nice fact on the repaint too.

[ebbomega]

Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do!