SmartWay honors carriers for environmental leadership

EPA program emphasises supply-chain collaboration to cut pollution.    The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Sunday bestowed its annual SmartWay Excellence awards on 44 truck and intermodal carriers for best environmental and energy efficiency performance among the program’s members.
   Smartway is a public-private, market-based initiative between the EPA, freight transportation providers and freight customers aimed at reducing greenhouse gases and air pollution by using smarter operational processes and technology to minimize fuel consumption and harmful emissions. 
   Companies benchmark operations, track fuel consumption and strive to improve performance annually. Shippers in the program, who want to reduce their overall carbon footprint and demonstrate environmental responsibility to the public, commit to move a certain percentage of their loads with SmartWay carriers.
   SmartWay, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary, has saved almost $17 billion in fuel costs and 121 million barrels of oil — the equivalent of taking 10 million cars off the road for one year, according to the EPA. 
   SmartWay carriers now account for 22 percent of all trucking miles, it says.
   This years award winners included DHL Express and C.R. England. DHL recently introduced a telematics tool in 1,400 delivery vehicles that leverages in-vehicle GPS satellite location information to track vehicle activity and performance, leading to improved routing, fuel consumption, driver behavior and maintenance management.
   Salt Lake City-based C.R. England, the largest temperature-controlled carrier in North America, said it improved its miles per gallon by 0.07, saving 825,000 gallons of fuel and $3 million in the past year through new and ongoing efficiency measures such as trailer tails, wheel covers, coaching driving habits and anti-idle technologies.
   Two weeks ago, the EPA honored 10 shippers and logistics companies for their success in supply chain sustainability.