Frito-Lay Reports Cutting Diesel Fuel Consumption Significantly

DALLAS — Frito-Lay North America has reduced its diesel fuel consumption significantly since it began adding natural gas, electric and high-efficiency diesel trucks to its fleet over the past 10 years, a company executive said.

The company fleet, which numbers 23,000, has 300 compressed natural-gas tractors — and plans to add another 100 by the end of the year — and 280 electric box trucks, Gregg Roden, the company’s senior vice president, said at a May 5 session of the 2015 ACT Expo.

Frito-Lay used to treat the company’s fleet as an operating necessity, as a lot of companies do.

Now it regards it as a competitive advantage, Roden said.

“Given that we have this diverse mix of our fleet assets, it really affords us the ability to innovate constantly,” Roden said.

The company also has 12 CNG fueling stations at 12 of its 26 transportation centers.

“We’ve driven 43 million miles in the program to date and saved roughly 6 million gallons of diesel fuel through the life of the program,” Roden said.

The drivers like driving the alternative-fuel vehicles, which also have become a great advertisement for the company.

“We have a lot of parking lot conversations with our consumers,” Roden said. “When they see the side of this truck they really are interested in what that means. Our trucks have become sales persons for things other than our products.”

Frito-Lay also began investing heavily about eight years ago in high-efficiency diesel engines, he said.

Plus, the last two years the company has trained 25,000 drivers on efficient driving behaviors, Roden said.