MOTOR FREIGHT
transportationreport
BY 2015, CONSUMER PRODUCTS GIANT PROCTER
& Gamble Co. (P&G) will use for-hire trucks running
on compressed natural gas (CNG) over as much as 20
percent of its nationwide network, which currently
stands at about 8,000 lanes. Earlier this year, P&G
awarded contracts to 11 carriers to move the company’s products on natural gas across 25 states.
Home improvement powerhouse Lowe’s
Companies Inc. plans to transition its dedicated fleet
serving all of its regional distribution centers to natural gas from diesel by the end of 2017.
Industrial titan Owens Corning Corp., which has
been one of the leaders in natural gas conversion for
transport, forecasts using the energy source to run
half its network miles by 2020.
Food behemoth General Mills Inc. plans to reduce
its diesel fuel use by 35 percent over the next five
years. General Mills is in the midst of a pilot program
with trucker Dart Transit to use CNG-powered
trucks on 63 of the shipper’s 7,500 U.S. lanes. Doug
Watne, General Mills’ director of North American
transportation, declined comment on how much
diesel the company consumes annually other than to
say, “too much.”
The four companies are at the vanguard of one of
those rare transformative moments in transportation.
Given that energy accounts for between 25 and 45
percent of a shipper’s overall product distribution
costs, the growing abundance of low-cost, cleaner-
burning natural gas is poised to change the transport
calculus in a way not seen since deregulation in the
early 1980s.
Shippers are taking serious looks at where natural
gas works, where it does not, and how to forge relationships with their carriers to create that oft-sought
yet elusive scenario: a win-win. Out of these efforts
will come models driven by “new levels of collaboration between multiple shippers and multiple carriers,”
predicts Patti M. Murdock, president of Clean
Logistics Consulting, which is based in Cincinnati.
Murdock created and ran P&G’s natural gas transportation program before retiring last January.
Because the natural gas fueling infrastructure,
unlike diesel, is not well established, shippers have a
Shippers
getting on
board with
natural gas
Low-cost, cleaner-burning natural gas is
poised to change the transport calculus. But
experts warn that excitement over its
potential needs to be balanced by thorough
research and an understanding of the risks.
