How does Flock Freight calculate emissions savings?
Here’s the short answer:
- Shared truckload shipments remove the need for 60% of the fuel that LTL carriers use for hub-and-spoke operations
- A shared truckload drives, on average, a 20% longer route than a regular point-A-to-point-B truckload shipment
- 60% – 20% = 40% savings in fuel and fuel emissions
The long answer:
In the supply chain world, being “green” is a major topic of discussion. Emissions targets, public image, and fractional environmental footprints are all surfacing to the forefront of company goals and missions across industries. In the freight industry, many different solutions promise a “greener” track to delivering goods, but it can be tough to decode exactly why and by how much these freight options – that claim to be sustainable – actually reduce environmental impact.
At Flock Freight, our specialty in shared truckload (STL) service is inherently better for the environment primarily because it slashes greenhouse gas emissions that are caused by freight shipping. In an effort to make sustainability easier to understand, we want to be completely transparent and inform you exactly how we calculate our emissions savings.
Before we explain, it’s important to understand a couple of key concepts. The first concept is carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e). When a gasoline- or diesel-powered vehicle emits exhaust, the atmosphere becomes exposed to many different things – not just carbon dioxide. When you see “CO2e” tied to our emissions savings, that means we’re calculating the impact of all different types of pollutants that come out of a truck’s exhaust and wrapping them up into a comprehensive metric that accounts for their Global Warming Potential (GWP). If you want to learn more about GWP, you can read about it here.
When shipping freight shared truckload, you reduce greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 40%. The way we arrived at this number is by assuming that emissions correlate closely with diesel consumption and by benchmarking fuel consumption from LTL carriers. Based on work from various sources, we learned that the distribution of fuel consumption when shipping LTL is:
- 40-70% Pickup & delivery (P&D)
- 20-30% Shuttle (transits between the terminals and hub within a market geography)
- 20-40% Linehaul (long-distance transport between markets)
Based on this logic, we assume that if a group of LTL shipments make up a shared truckload, they would not require the P&D or shuttle portions of this journey. They would, however, incur some additional fuel expense, specifically:
- Fuel associated with idle time at pickup and delivery
- Fuel associated with out-of-route miles
- Penalty for less than 100% utilization of linehaul trailer (We make the conservative assumption that LTL linehaul trailers are 100% utilized, while shared truckload trailers average 100% utilization.)
The table lays out an illustrative example about four LTL shipments that get moved between two markets 1,300 miles apart as part of a shared truckload. Since this analysis makes multiple assumptions, we kept all assumptions as conservative as possible, specifically using the largest percentage of linehaul fuel expense in the range. Additionally, we assume penalties for (a) idle time, (b) out-of-route mileage, and (c) trailer utilization. The result is fuel consumption of 600 gallons of fuel, or a 40% savings versus LTL.
| Fuel Use (Gallons) | Explanation |
| 1,000 | Total fuel consumption to move four LTL shipments from Market A to Market B |
| – 400 | Fuel required for pickup at origin points |
| – 200 | Fuel required for transit from origin terminal to hub and from destination hub to terminal |
| = 400 | Fuel required for linehaul (1,300 miles / 6.5 MPG) |
| + 40 | Allotment for idle time at pickup and delivery (10% of linehaul) |
| + 80 | Allotment for 20% out-of-route mileage of shared truckload route (20% of linehaul) |
| + 80 | Penalty for 80% trailer utilization (20% of linehaul) |
| = 600 | Total fuel consumption of moving shipments as a shared truckload |
From here, we assume every STL shipment’s emissions savings occur because it did not move as an LTL through the hub-and-spoke network. Assuming that the STL shipment replaced an LTL one, we use the following figures to calculate emissions:
- Average mileage of a shipment: 1,000 miles
- Average fuel economy of a 53’ truck: 6.5 miles per gallon
- CO2 equivalent of a gallon of fuel: 19.6 pounds of CO2e per gallon of fuel
We use the EPA-defined CO2e for a gallon of fuel, which you can explore here to see how fuel savings equate to different environmental impacts.
Calculating exact emissions is a difficult task that can never be done with 100% accuracy unless it’s being measured in a lab. Is the calculation we use backed by real data that is constantly being monitored? Yes. Is it perfect? No. We believe that making the decision to be environmentally responsible should be backed by an understanding of how that impact is happening and the magnitude that you’re contributing to make a difference.
Flock Freight is constantly working to educate and inform our customers across the industry about how they can produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions in their supply chains. It is without question that shared truckload makes strides to help supply chains become “green.” This belief is part of the reason we’ve been certified as a B Corporation, with a central focus on using business as a force for good.
As we tirelessly work to bring environmental stewardship to the forefront of the freight industry, we encourage every shipper – whether you’re a small business or a Fortune 500 corporation – to take part in our mission: To reimagine and reinvent the freight industry by relentlessly eliminating waste and inefficiency.
