UPS Saved Millions of Gallons of Gas by Not Turning Left!



Here’s a smart idea: last year UPS shaved 28.5 million miles off its delivery routes and saved about 3 million gallon of gas partly by … not turning left!

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.

A short, delightful article by Joel Lovell at the NY Times: Link (Illustration by Tamara Shopsin)


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Posted on December 16, 2007 at 4:08 am by Alex
Category: 1 Other Neat Things



6 comments to "UPS Saved Millions of Gallons of Gas by Not Turning Left!"

  • scooter jay
    December 16th, 2007 at 4:56 am

    hmmm, i have changed some of my driving routes to avoid left turns….not to save gas but to avoid waiting forever for the fools that ignore traffic lights and drive thru when it is red.

  • MoonCake
    December 16th, 2007 at 7:10 am

    how.. neatorific! i’m so glad that companies like UPS are making changes in their driving operations. i know it’s becoming such a fad to be ‘green’ but i hope that this is one fad that doesn’t go out of style. we have such a technological advantage these days, and i’m so glad companies are actually harnessing those abilities.

  • Ali S.
    December 16th, 2007 at 9:41 am

    I just hope with missing all those left turns they’ll be able to deliver my package by the end of this week!

  • ambassdor
    December 16th, 2007 at 7:08 pm

    sounds like a PR stunt

  • Ex
    December 17th, 2007 at 11:04 am

    Well, I’ve often heard it said that while two wrongs don’t make a right, three rights make a left.

  • Nick B.
    December 17th, 2007 at 12:08 pm

    I don’t doubt this. When I worked in shipping out UPS driver would sometimes have a person that followed him all day and timed him. Everything was timed, from how long it took to make deliveries to taking his key out of his pocket and putting it in the ignition. UPS is crazy efficient, you don’t get to the point where banks take out loans from you by wasting money.

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