Innovative Electric Trucks Make Companies Shine Greener

Electric cars are in vogue now, and I read with great interest about another category that’s moving even faster. That would be electric delivery trucks.  The math makes sense:  a diesel truck that Frito Lay uses to deliver chips around New York City gets about 10 miles per gallon, and every year or so, they need brake jobs that cost $1100. Then t’here’s the fuel cost about $6500 a year, and the $2700 a year for fluids for the transmission and the crankcase. Even with a cost of $30,000 more per truck, fleet owners like Frito Lay and Staples have found they can pay for the electric trucks in just 3.3 years.

With these trucks that take a set delivery route every day, the 50 mile range works just fine.  So the bottom line of the company does better and everyone who is  breathing around the trucks gets a break too. I also think there’s subtle benefit that is not insubstantial. Doesn’t every company want to be able to trumpet its green cred? 

Consumers like green, and reward companies that they feel are doing their part. That’s what I told my friend Rebecca, who is the head of the bank that’s buiding a huge addition here in town. I asked her where the solar panels are on that huge flat new roof? Wouldn’t it make the bank look better to be putting up a solar-powered branch?

She said that they looked into photo electric panels and the payback cost was not quick enough. Yet Green Fields Market has the panels and they made it work. I think the bank should take another look at it…because there’s gotta be a payback, either with customer perception or in dollars and cents.