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Plan will help UPS save on fuel costs — and save the environment.

UPS (UPS) has announced that it is buying 200 hybrid trucks for delivery. Really Natural reports on what is expected, in terms of savings, from these new hybrid delivery trucks:

The trucks will feature Mercedes-Benz diesel engines, a 2 kWh lithium ion battery pack, and a computer-controlled manual transmission resulting in a 40 percent fuel savings and a 90 percent reduction in carbon emissions compared to standard diesel systems.

On top of that, UPS is also ordering compressed natural gas vehicles (200 of them). This means that the number of vehicles running on alternative fuels in the UPS fleet will number more than 2,000.

This socially conscious move by UPS will allow the company to save money, as well as reduce its contribution to global warming. And, if UPS continues the trend and decides to replace older vehicles with hybrid delivery trucks as they wear out, the savings to the company could be greater down the road. And greater savings could lead to better stock prices: preparing for the future never hurts.

For environmentally aware investors, this move also ups the warm fuzzies toward UPS. Should environmentally friendly investors take notice and invest in UPS, rewarding the company for its efforts? We’ll see. But it does make me feel better about shipping packages via UPS.

Disclosure: I do not own stock in UPS. However, I have used UPS to ship packages. This is likely to continue.

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Photo:SoulCookie, Creative Commons, Flickr