The trendy sports car Tesla has it. The Boeing DreamLiner has it. And now the UPS package car has it too. Composite materials are now being introduced to replace certain metal components in the ubiquitous brown trucks as a way to lighten the load by 900 pounds and improve fuel efficiency by 40%.  

UPS announced this week that it intends to purchase 150 composite-body vehicles, as a result of a year-long pilot program to test the composite materials’ durability, repair qualities and structural strength. The composite-clad package cars (nicknamed the “plastic truck”) weighs in nearly 900 lbs. lighter than a traditional package car, helping improve fuel efficiency by 40%, according to test results. Delivery is scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2012.

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“Analytics” is one of those terms that can make the general public wince. It sounds like so much corporate wonkiness. But if John Q. Public knew that UPS uses analytics to reduce the environmental impact of all those brown delivery trucks, he might be interested in learning more about business analytics. Well, maybe.

A recent issue of DC Velocity magazine pointed out that the emergence of analytics software is a logistics game-changer. UPS couldn’t agree more. We’ve employed analytics with some award-winning results in our small package operation. One of the latest initiatives combines telematics technology with advanced algorithms and proprietary firmware to analyze a stream of data collected from sensors placed on the company’s famous brown delivery trucks. Voila! It’s an analytics application of mega proportions.

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In the summer of 1984, I went to the theater and saw Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. William Shatner had his T.J. Hooker hair (Happy 80th Birthday, Shat’!) and afterward I went to Taco Bell and got the collector’s glass with the U.S.S. Enterprise on it. Awesome. The movie was about a search (duh) that was risky and difficult, but the reward was an altruistic goal worth all the risks.

UPS embarks on an epic search today; “The Search for MPG.” UPS is the proving ground for five new vehicles by Utilimaster and Isuzu. These are not alternative fuel vehicles. They are diesel vehicles, but have smaller, 4-cylinder engines and lightweight composite materials to increase their fuel efficiency.

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Like a lot of parents, I worry about keeping my child safe and making sure she eats enough vegetables. But I hadn’t really thought about air pollution until last February. That’s when The UPS Foundation announced a grant to help take the Clean Air Campaign’s No-Idling initiative nationwide.

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Whether you drive a 40-foot big rig or a two-door Prius, fuel conservation is a concern for most anyone. With a fleet of 88,000 vehicles on the street every day, logging over 2 billion miles a year, the automotive engineers at UPS can offer motorists some solid advice for saving fuel.

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