ATA, carriers launch program for more sustainable future
The program is being called a continuation of environmental advances made by the trucking industry over the last quarter century
The Trucker News Services
5/8/2008
WASHINGTON — The American Trucking Associations today launched a far-reaching program of initiatives to set the industry on the road toward a more sustainable future under the banner Trucks Deliver a Cleaner Tomorrow.
This first-ever industry-wide environmental sustainability program identifies a series of initiatives that will reduce fuel consumption and combat the challenge of global climate change through innovative ways to reduce CO2 emissions.
ATA President and CEO Bill Graves praised the program as a landmark effort that will join all trucking industry stakeholders to work together on these issues.
“ATA has committed itself to a series of measures that can reduce fuel consumption by 86 billion gallons and CO2 emissions by 900 million tons for all vehicles over the next 10 years,” Graves said. “Our proposals are practical, reasonable, and doable. They make environmental sense, and they make common sense.”
The program is a continuation of environmental advances made by the trucking industry over the last quarter century, Graves noted.
“But there’s no doubt that today’s skyrocketing diesel prices give us an added incentive to roll it out across the industry, and for Congress to provide the support the program needs,” he said.
The report includes six key recommendations to reduce fuel consumption and addresses the impact of these activities on the environment. They are the equivalent of eliminating the CO2 generated by 9.6 million Americans for one year — roughly equal to the population of the Chicago metropolitan area. The recommendations are displayed on a new Web site, www.trucksdeliver.org, together with full details of the trucking industry’s new commitments on sustainability:
• Set governors on new trucks to limit speeds to no more than 68 mph and reduce the national speed limit to 65 mph for all vehicles
• Reduce engine idling
• Increase fuel efficiency by encouraging participation in the U.S. EPA SmartWay Transport Partnership Program
• Reduce congestion by improving highways, if necessary by raising the fuels tax
• Use more productive truck combinations, and
• Support national fuel economy standards for trucks.
Graves was joined at the launch of the new sustainability program by Margo Oge, director of the Office of Transportation and Air Quality at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the CEOs and key executives of many of the nation’s leading freight and trucking companies, including Fedex Freight, UPS Inc., Schneider National, Titan Transfer Inc. and Con-way Inc. These companies strongly support this industry-wide effort and the recommendations at the heart of the new sustainability program.
The report was developed by the ATA Sustainability Task Force, headed by Tommy Hodges, ATA vice chairman and chairman of Titan Transfer Inc.
“This report represents a culmination of many years of ground-breaking efforts on the part of the trucking industry to integrate the most effective diesel consumption reduction techniques into their business models and to transport goods to their destination in the most efficient way we can for us and for our customers,” Hodges said. “As the challenge of global climate change has emerged, we have the added impetus to make progress on those innovations.”