ADVERTISING HYBRID USE
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Apart from cost savings, running greener trucks has a PR benefit too. For VV, this is a key part of the philosophy of a company specialising in organic foods, whose customers take notice of environmental issues. For Coca-Cola, the PR benefit may not be as important as the operational gains, but trailers typically have a large graphic to inform the public that the tractor upfront is a hybrid. All the same, this probably has more of an impact in the US – where the Toyota Prius hybrid has become a green icon and ‘hybrid’ is a highly recognisable concept – than it would in Europe.
Coca-Cola’s hybrids are part of a company-wide effort to reduce its carbon footprint by 15% of 2007 levels by 2020 and, not incidentally, to drive down fuel costs. Last year, Coke conducted an ‘eco-driving’ programme of which hybrids were but a part, explains Saltzgiver: “It was really about teaching drivers about coasting and using the accelerator properly.”