UPS, the world's largest package delivery company, has completed the installation of technology that will significantly reduce the number of miles driven by its familiar brown package cars on Sacramento roads, subsequently reducing fuel consumption and emissions.

The new technology, which UPS calls package flow technology, consists of software and hardware that enable the company to map out shorter and more efficient routes for drivers. The new technology already has been implemented in UPS's Shore Street facility.
Each year, UPS drivers log more than 4.5 million miles on Sacramento-area roads. Based on initial results, package flow technology will reduce the number of miles driven each year in Sacramento by as much as 265,000 miles, saving more than 30,000 gallons of fuel and emitting 288 fewer metric tons of CO2.
Package flow technology leverages the tidal wave of digital information produced by scanning UPS "smart labels" on nearly all of the 14 million packages moving through the company's global network each day. Consequently, delivery route planners know the night before what packages will need to be delivered to Sacramento residents and businesses the next day. By "pushing" this data into a software program that plans driver routes, UPS can map out routes that require the fewest number of miles to complete.
The technology also helps decrease the number of missed deliveries, thereby reducing the need to drive back to an address a second time to deliver a package. This results in less fuel used and fewer CO2 emissions. UPS is implementing package flow technology at more than 1,000 package centers throughout the United States. Deployment is scheduled to be completed in 2007.