Electric Autonomy climbs into the passenger seat of a zero-emission UPS truck to learn about the delivery provider’s decarbonization plans

In 2007, Keith was a new postal delivery driver.

Seventeen years later, he can still remember the toll working 10-to-12-hour shifts in a combustion-engine truck would take on his body.

“You go home and blow your nose…and it was like blowing soot. Just from what you breathe in,” Keith says. “It was a carcinogen factory.”

These memories come back to Keith as he sits in the seat of a new electric Xos delivery step van — one of 10 operating out of UPS’s Caledon, Ont., hub, which is at the forefront of one of the world’s largest delivery company’s push for sustainability in Canada.

“We have global goals from a sustainability perspective. By 2025, [our] global goal is to have 40 per cent of our fleet operating on alternative fuels and then, in 2035, we want to reduce our carbon footprint by 50 per cent from our 2020 levels,” says Tara Redmond, vice president of buildings and systems engineering for Canada, in an interview with Electric Autonomy.

“The ultimate goal is 2050 carbon neutrality. Electrification becomes a component of that strategy. We’re working with different manufacturers…and then really trying to figure out what role EVs will play in our overall strategy.”

The big picture

Redmond and Keith represent two different, but connected, ends of UPS’s sustainability strategy.

Currently, 24 per cent of UPS’s Canadian fleet runs on alternative fuels. It’s a combination of propane, compressed natural gas and electric vehicles.

UPS’s first 10 EVs are running out of its state-of-the-art Caledon facility, which houses a fleet of 240 vehicles and processes up to 35,000 packages per hour.

Its next 10 electric delivery trucks are scheduled to go into service in Vancouver later this fall. Another 10 electric vehicles will arrive next year, but are not yet assigned a specific location. At the same time, the company is continuing to push forward with its other alternative fuel vehicles.

“It’s a really multi-level, multifaceted kind of approach. 2050 It seems like a long ways away, but it’s really not. That’s why it’s important just to explore all of our different options now and understand when the timing is right as to what our path forward is going to be,” says Redmond.

“I don’t think it’ll be 100 per cent electric. But definitely electric will play a role in that as we move through renewable and more green energy streams.”

Incorporating EVs

For Redmond, the company’s transition to an electric fleet is the result of careful planning of infrastructure — a building, route planning and charging infrastructure — to support the vehicles.

Keith’s role as a driver is to witness (literally) where the rubber meets the road with his assigned electric truck to give UPS critical feedback on performance.

“It’s night and day,” says Keith, who has driven over 5,800 kilometres on the electric truck since it went into service in February.

“Generally I do 90 kilometres a day. That’s predominantly why they chose our routes because we have shorter kilometres so there is no stress for battery life.”

Keith’s daily routine involves a morning of deliveries — typically taking around three hours — a return to base for a lunch break where the trucks will get a top-up charge and then back on the road for an afternoon of pickups.

“We’ve had some really good feedback from the drivers,” notes Redmond.

For his part, in addition to less emissions, Keith says the acceleration of the vehicle and the quieter ride are major pluses of the electric truck.

So far, most of the maintenance is software-related. Xos sends a technician almost every month to do those updates when the vehicles are on scheduled downtime.

And, says Redmond, training has also been provided to UPS mechanics in case any of the hardware on the vehicles needs maintenance.

Meeting goals

Having taken its first tentative steps into EVs, UPS Canada is focused now on gathering data to understand the future of the carrier’s electric fleet.

Even though the first vehicles arrived in Caledon in February, an unseasonably warm winter meant there is little data to indicate how they perform in extreme cold. But the experience thus far has given other valuable insights. Most notably: the grid has its limits.

Currently, the Caledon depot has enough capacity to support another 10 electric trucks without needing further upgrades. The depot’s charging infrastructure is provided by EverCharge, which also does work for UPS in the U.S. However, Redmond says, it’s too early to know if more capacity will be added to support a larger EV fleet or if the depot will focus more on alternative fuels.

“Electrification is really just starting to ramp up and everybody’s learning and there’s nobody out there leading the way,” says Redmond. “Everyone’s kind of finding their footing as we go. We just thought it was really important that we start testing.”

Carolyn Kim is the vice president of corporate affairs at UPS Canada. Kim says after the first six months of operation there are now some initial findings she can share about UPS’s electric trucks.

“In terms of vehicle performance, we can share that we estimate well-to-wheel emission reductions of 22 MT CO2e per year (per package car), based on package cars running about 100 kilometres a day,” she says in an email to Electric Autonomy.

“Our technicians are excited to work on EVs as it helps upgrade their skills and enables them to work on new technologies.”

The way of the future

Over the course of an hour Keith manoeuvres around industrial parking lots and it-all-looks-the-same-to-me loading bays as he gradually empties the cargo hold of the electric UPS truck.

He knows the streets with the fewest traffic lights and the cut-throughs that will shave precious seconds off his route. Each delivery recipient gets a greeting by name and, often, a joke.

In between the stops, Keith talks easily about what he thinks the future of last-mile delivery will look like.

Despite being a passionate Dodge Charger driver in his private life (“I love the roar of the engine”) Keith sees battery-powered transportation as the obvious and necessary evolution.

“For the environment it’s needed because delivery trucks they do emit a lot. We’re on the road a majority of the time and we don’t have the greatest footprints. It’d be nice our industry could adopt [EVs],” says Keith.

“I believe it’s the way of the future.”