Two years ago, Fox Transportation, a national transportation and logistics company, developed a proposal called “Imagine,” imagining that the company could make one million deliveries using only alternative fuel vehicles. Today, with the help of the Mobile Source Air Pollution Reduction Review Committee (MSRC), Fox Transportation CEO Mike Fox’s imagination is becoming a reality with the rollout of 20 new CNG, 16-foot delivery box vans.
Fox Transportation has been in business for more than 25 years, with approximately 600 delivery vehicles rolling across 12 states. In California, the company makes more than one million deliveries each year mainly to pharmacies, but also to hospitals and prisons located throughout the state. Deliveries are primarily made in the most densely populated areas, coming in direct contact with people patronizing high-traffic stores like CVS, Wal-Mart, and Walgreens. Fox has 250 vehicles in its Southern California fleet, and the MSRC-funded vehicles are the company’s first CNG vehicles.
The MSRC provided $500,000 in Clean Transportation Funding to purchase the 20 new CNG delivery vehicles, which will service 150,000 pharmacies and hospitals annually throughout the four-county area. Hitting the road in early May, these vehicles will travel approximately 1.2 million miles per year, so the emissions saving potential is significant.
With each of Fox’s vehicles making about 30 deliveries a day, Mike wanted to make their deliveries cleaner by deploying CNG vehicles that improve the air quality for everyone who comes in contact with their trucks - from drivers to the customers.
The MSRC’s funding helped Fox make a decision that was both good for his company and good for the environment. “The MSRC’s grant funding made the decision easier because while we invested $37,000 and the MSRC provided the other $25,000 for each CNG vehicle, we are able to make up for our cost of the new vans in our fuel savings,” he said.
Our company’s plans are to deploy 100 CNG vehicles throughout Southern California in 2013,” he said.
