Pitt Ohio: Trucking Firm Takes on Carbon

Courtesy of Pittsburgh Business Times by Anya Litvak: Ohio is building a LEED-certified terminal in Harmar, with geothermal heating and cooling, LED lights, water reclamation and, possibly, a CNG fueling station.

You’d think all those things would go a long way toward reducing the company’s carbon footprint, but not so, says Pitt Ohio’s carbon calculator.

The tool, built by Duquesne University researchers specifically for the firm, reveals that 90 percent of Pitt Ohio’s carbon output comes from its trucks. It’s a trucking company, so it’s not all that surprising.

What is a little surprising is how cognizant Pitt Ohio seems to be of its carbon footprint which, according to Geoff Muessig, is pretty much the same thing as its operational costs.

Muessig, the company’s chief marketing officer, says the firm can track the carbon impact of each individual shipment and clients are given the option of seeing how much their orders impact the environment. Not all are interested, but the bigger firms — the Fortune 500 companies, European customers — want to know this stuff, he said.

There’s a host of other metrics too: drivers get a weekly score card that includes shifting, driving, and idling scores — both raw data and how they stack up against their peers.

The company’s spent a lot of time retraining veteran drivers on ways to decrease their miles per gallon. It’s also bought new trucks, retrofitted old ones with more racks to carry more load, put aerodynamic “skirting” on some vehicles to help with performance, and diversified its fleet.

The result: “Last year we grew the company by 7 percent, but reduced the carbon output on a per shipment basis by 3 percent,” Muessig said.

This year, Pitt Ohio is starting to look at switching part of its diesel-fueled fleet to run on compressed natural gas, hence the potential CNG fueling station in Harmar.

Right now it’s running a pilot program with a handful of CNG vehicles, which it refuels at the EQT CNG station in the Strip, just blocks away from Pitt Ohio’s current headquarters.

Tags: Duquesne University, Pitt Ohio

Category: General Update, Green, Vehicles