Two years ago, Fox Transportation developed an innovative proposal called “Imagine” -imagining that the company could make one million deliveries using only alternative fuel vehicles. Today, with the help of the MSRC, Fox Transportation CEO Mike Fox’s imagination is becoming a reality with the rollout of 20 new CNG 16-foot delivery box vans.
A national transportation and logistics company, 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. “Having cleaner burning trucks driving past a mom and her kids going into their neighborhood pharmacy makes our investment in these vehicles worth it,” said Mike.
Mike was an advocate for what is now the MSRC’s Near Zero Emission Medium- and Medium-Heavy Duty Vehicle Incentive Program even before the MSRC had such a program. “We encountered a big learning curve when looking for funding for alternative fuel medium-duty vehicles” Mike explained. “We attended a lot of MSRC and SCAQMD meetings, and had the process and concepts in place, but we just needed the funding. We were lucky enough to come across the MSRC who enabled us to give our input as to what projects needed funding the most.”
Mike went on to say that the low-hanging fruit of cleaning up big diesel trucks already had been addressed, and medium-duty vehicles were the next best thing to tackle as a means to decrease air pollution.
However, looking back to when the economy soured in 2009, he said this made it difficult to look at investing in CNG vehicles. “There are a lot of people in the transportation business that think we need to start thinking about alternative fuel vehicles, but there are not enough funds to make this feasible,” Mike remarked.
He noted that the clean air agencies tend to look at things from a technology perspective, but he said that this is a business decision for companies like his. “If we have a vehicle that is paid off that can work for two or three more years, it doesn’t make sense from a business perspective to buy a new vehicle, let alone a CNG vehicle that can cost more than $25,000 over the cost of an unleaded fueled vehicle.”
However, the MSRC’s funding helped Mike 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.”
Mike said these new vehicles are cost-neutral because of Fox’s savings on fuel. “We are breaking even from day-one on these vans,” he explained. “Because we are financing the vans, what we save on fuel is enough to cover our monthly vehicle payments; so again, these CNG vehicles make business sense.”
And Mike doesn’t plan to stop with these 20 vehicles. “These are only the first wave of CNG box vans for Fox Transportation. Our company’s plans are to deploy 100 CNG vehicles throughout Southern California in 2013,” he said.
“Imagine if someday we can replace all vehicles on the road with cleaner burning technology.”
Mike’s imagination is truly making a difference today in local communities throughout Southern California.