America’s largest grocery retailer announced plans to replace 40 diesel trucks with heavy-duty NGVs, which will serve Kroger’s Fred Meyer and QFC grocery chains in Oregon and Washington and will refuel at an LNG station to be designed and engineered by Clean Energy. Kroger is also working with Westport and has placed an order for 40 Westport iCE PACK™ systems to be integrated onto their Freightliner trucks, which will also feature the Cummins Westport ISX12 G engine.
All 40 trucks will be delivered to Kroger by the end of summer 2014 to support their corporate goal to improve fleet efficiency by increasing miles per gallon and load capacity. The supermarket chain is implementing their first pilot program of the Westport iCE PACK systems at one of their Los Angeles distribution centers. “Adopting LNG for transportation makes both environmental and economic sense,” said Ashley White, Logistics Sustainability Manager at The Kroger Co.
In addition to Kroger, Clean Energy is partnering with another grocery chain. Cardenas Markets will deploy 15 heavy-duty natural gas trucks, which will refuel throughout Clean Energy’s network in California and Nevada, and plans to convert its entire fleet of over 50 trucks to CNG in the coming years. “Our customers are like family. Using this cleaner fuel improves the air our customers breathe and helps keep costs low,” commented Raul Chavez, manager of special projects at Cardenas.
Clean Energy’s fueling agreements also include UPS, with 15 additional NGVs that will begin refueling at Clean Energy’s stations in Jacksonville, Fla., and in downtown Los Angeles, Calif.; Anaheim Transportation Network (ATN), which ordered a customized mobile LNG station for its fleet of 35 LNG buses; and Garden City Sanitation (GCS) with currently 23 CNG refuse trucks in service in San José, Calif., an entire fleet expected to be converted by mid-2015, and a time-fill CNG station being built by Clean Energy.
Source: Clean Energy Fuels/Westport
