It's no real secret that UPS (NYSE:UPS) has gotten pretty good at fuel efficiency. From mandating more right-hand turns to adding nearly two thousand natural gas-powered and diesel hybrid delivery trucks to its fleet, UPS increased the miles per gallon of the delivery vehicles in their U.S. Domestic Package segment by 10% from 2000-2009. And  in 2009, UPS drivers logged 77.3 million miles more than they did ten years earlier, yet used 3.2 million gallons less fuel.

Not settling with fuel efficiency improvements to date, the global delivery giant last week promised to improve its fuel economy an additional 9 percent by 2020. Modest, perhaps, but when a fleet of vehicles the size of UPS can improve efficiency by just a small amount, we could be talking about savings of millions of gallons fuel.

According to the UPS sustainability report released last week,The company's new goal for U.S. Domestic Package segment would improve fleet fuel economy by an additional 9 percent by 2020, representing a 20 percent improvement by 2020 as compared to fuel economy in 2000,

But UPS isn't keeping their efficiency tips to themselves -- at least not for a price. A special division of the company, UPS Logistics Technologies, has developed ten proprietary transportation management products and licensed them to 1,200 companies around the world to help make other service and delivery companies reduce fuel consumption. Tools available include optimized route planning, real-time wireless dispatch utilizing GPS, strategic territory planning and web-based reporting.

In 2009, an estimated 1.1 billion total miles were not driven because of the UPS software, translating into a fuel savings of 186 million gallons and an avoided 1.9 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide.