“The trucking industry continues doing its part to reduce its environmental impact, and ABF will continue to lead the way, adding to its already best-in-class records in highway safety and cargo care.”

— Bob Davidson, ABF chief executive officer  

Effective environmental management is a corporate priority for ABF. The company is actively involved, both internally and through partnerships, in environmental innovations and practices designed to enhance environmental performance and efficiency.

ABF is active in programs designed to reduce both fuel consumption and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, including the Environmental Protection Agency’s SmartWay Transport Partnership and the American Trucking Associations Sustainable Future program.

Since 1976, ABF has voluntarily limited the maximum speed of its trucks, which reduces fuel consumption and emissions, partially offsets fuel economy degradation of the newer engines, and contributes to our impressive safety record.

By limiting maximum speed to 62 mph, each ABF truck annually emits 33.5 fewer tons of CO2 than identical trucks operating at 68 mph.

Beginning in 1994, when the technology was available to prohibit discretionary engine idling, all new equipment purchases included computerized idle shutdown, another step to insure ABF’s long-standing no-idling policy was observed.

ABF further reduces fuel consumption and enhances operational efficiency with practices that include a strict equipment maintenance schedule and an aggressive equipment replacement program.

The average age of ABF road tractors is one and a half years.

This new equipment produces dramatically fewer emissions of particulate matter and oxides of nitrogen than older equipment.

Estimates indicate it would take 60 tractors with 2007-compliant engines to equal the sulfur-derivative emissions of one 1988 model tractor.

ABF has maintained a fuel efficiency/environmental performance score of 1.25—the highest score allowed—since joining the SmartWay program in 2006.

By 2012, the SmartWay initiative aims to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by up to 66 million metric tons and nitrogen oxide emissions by up to 200,000 tons per year.

The ATA is also committing itself to a series of measures that together can reduce fuel consumption by 86 billion gallons and CO2 emissions of all vehicles by 900 million tons in the next 10 years.

A member of the ATA Sustainability Task Force, ABF integrates environmental values into its decision-making processes by considering the environmental impacts of proposed actions and reasonable alternatives to those actions.