U.S. food delivery company Sysco announced it has added 10 Freightliner eCascadia electric semi trucks to its Houston Fleet.
The company now has 120 electric trucks making deliveries globally and plans to add nearly 800 battery-electric Class 8 tractors by 2026, according to Wion News. Moreover, Sysco has a broader goal of electrifying 35% of its U.S. broad-line fleet by 2030 — this would add 2,500 electric trucks, the publication said.
Sysco's announcement is great news for clean air, as electric vehicles don't produce tailpipe pollution. Meanwhile, gas-powered motor vehicles — particularly freight — are a major source of fine particulate matter, which has been linked to asthma, chronic bronchitis, and heart attacks. In fact, pollution from gas-guzzling vehicles causes thousands of premature deaths in the U.S. each year and costs the country billions in healthcare fees, according to Earthjustice.
EVs are also a tool to help in the fight against an overheating planet, which threatens communities in a variety of ways, from more severe droughts that put a stranglehold on our food supply to more damaging storms that can take lives and demolish homes.
The transportation sector is by far the biggest contributor to planet-warming pollution in the U.S., accounting for about a third of the share, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. EVs produce no planet-heating pollution, however.
Sysco joins a handful of other big-name companies that are making eco-friendly initiatives and electrifying their fleets. For instance, PepsiCo announced plans to add 50 Class 8 Tesla Semis and 75 Ford E-Transit electric vans. Plus, CocaCola acquired 20 Daimler Freightliner eCascadia Class 8 tractors, a variety of electric semi that produce no planet-warming pollution other than that from its electric sources.
Since EVs and power plants both operate much more efficiently than gas-powered vehicles, they are still less polluting even when all of their electricity comes from fossil fuels.
"We are proud of our progress to scale our electric truck fleet and continue our journey to meet our climate goal," Neil Russell, Sysco's chief administrative officer, said in an official statement. "This work is important to many of our customers who have also set goals to reduce emissions."
Dan Purefoy, the company's chief supply chain officer, added, "The scale of our EV deployment today is the result of years of planning and tremendous levels of cross-industry collaboration."
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