Thursday, December 13, 2007

U.P.S. Doesn't turn Left

This is big thinking. New thinking.
Use a computer to plan your routes for the least waiting at lights, left hand turns.

Cool.


It seems that sitting in the left lane, engine idling, waiting for oncoming traffic to clear so you can make a left-hand turn, is minutely wasteful — of time and peace of mind, for sure, but also of gas and therefore money. Not a ton of gas and money if we’re talking about just you and your Windstar, say, but immensely wasteful if we’re talking about more than 95,000 big square brown trucks delivering packages every day. And this realization — that when you operate a gigantic fleet of vehicles, tiny improvements in the efficiency of each one will translate to huge savings overall — is what led U.P.S. to limit further the number of left-hand turns its drivers make.


Last year, according to Heather Robinson, a U.P.S. spokeswoman, the software helped the company shave 28.5 million miles off its delivery routes, which has resulted in savings of roughly three million gallons of gas and has reduced CO2 emissions by 31,000 metric tons. So what can Brown do for you? We can’t speak to how good or bad they are in the parcel-delivery world, but they won’t be clogging up the left-hand lane while they do their business.

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1 comment:

  1. this is the kind of story that makes me excited about modern technology! that is so phenomenal, hopefully more companies will recognize the impact of such decisions. sweet. i'm totally going to be re-telling this one for a long time to come, thanks for sharing!

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