UPS is putting 245 natural gas-powered vans into service in California and Colorado. (Photo: UPS)

Addition of 245 natural gas-powered delivery vans adds to largest private fleet of alternatively-fueled vehicles in the shipping industry.

While oil baron-turned clean(er) energy crusader, T. Boone Pickens, reinvigorates his national energy campaign to ramp-up wind and convert trucking fleets to run on compressed natural gas (this time, with a much smaller role for wind energy), several well-known fleets are moving forward with plans to implement large-scale fleet conversions to the cleaner-burning fuel.

Over the past month, UPS has deployed 140 new compressed natural gas (CNG) in Denver and another 105 across four cities in California: San Ramon, Fresno, West Los Angeles and Ontario.

The CNG truck bodies are identical externally to the signature-brown trucks that comprise the UPS fleet.  The trucks are expected to yield a 15 percent emissions reduction over the cleanest diesel engines available in the market today.

“The greening of our fleet demonstrates the effectiveness of harnessing multiple technologies and applying the right vehicles to areas where they will provide the best advantage,” said Bob Stoffel, UPS senior vice president of supply chain, strategy, engineering and sustainability. “Compressed Natural Gas continues to be a sustainable technology for UPS’s fleet because natural gas is cost effective, clean-burning and abundant.”

UPS operates one of the largest private fleets of alternative fuel vehicles in the industry — more than 1,900 propane, electric, electric hybrid, hydrogen fuel cell, compressed natural gas and hydraulic hybrid vehicles.

In another project, UPS is working with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to develop a hybrid-diesel delivery van that cuts emissions by up to 30 percent.