UPS: No Left Turns is Right on & Fuel-Saving Tips for all Drivers

[Chuck]

Annually, UPS saved 3 million gallons of gas, and reduced emissions by 32,000 metric tons of CO2 - the equivalent of removing 5,300 passenger cars off the road for an entire year

Peter DeMarco - Boston Globe - April 20, 2008

Article makes very similar points Wayne made at Live Green Plano…you are paying an extra 82 cents a gallon if your speeding, driving with underinflated tires, and have a dirty air filter. -- Ed.

Tuesday is Earth Day, but this year I'm not thinking green; I'm thinking brown, as in Big Brown, United Parcel Service.

Why UPS? Because I just found out a fairly crazy fact about UPS drivers: They make a conscious effort not to make left-hand turns.

Company leaders figured out that sitting in traffic, waiting to make a left, burns way too much fuel. So they zapped as many left turns as they could from 100,000 truck routes a day.

Instead, drivers are handed computer-generated delivery routes that have them going in efficiently calculated loops, calling for left turns only when necessary… [Read More]

[Elixer]

Grammar police:

Originally Posted by Delta Flyer

Article makes very similar points Wayne made at Live Green Plano…you are paying an extra 82 cents a gallon if your speeding, driving with underinflated tires, and have a dirty air filter. -- Ed.

should be you're.

[pdk]

Originally Posted by Delta Flyer

Article makes very similar points Wayne made at Live Green Plano…you are paying an extra 82 cents a gallon if your speeding, driving with underinflated tires, and have a dirty air filter. -- Ed.

I've never quite understood how this "paying $0.82 extra per gallon" or "saving $1 per gallon" works. Of course I understand that what we do makes each dollar go farther, but I'm curious as to exactly how these numbers are determined.

I'd really like to use this argument, and perhaps work it into a piece I'm filming with a local news station later this week, but I'd like to understand it first.

[B.L.E.]

Originally Posted by pdk

I've never quite understood how this "paying $0.82 extra per gallon" or "saving $1 per gallon" works. Of course I understand that what we do makes each dollar go farther, but I'm curious as to exactly how these numbers are determined.

I'd really like to use this argument, and perhaps work it into a piece I'm filming with a local news station later this week, but I'd like to understand it first.

You get a different "cost" number than a "saving" number because different numbers are used in the denominator.

It's like paying $1.50 for a wiget that costed the store $1.00 wholesale. Is the markup 50% or is it 33.3%? It depends on whether you use the retail price or the wholesale price as the denominator.