Double Decker Trucks Cut Birds Eye Road Miles

A ten week trial of double deck trailers by Birds Eye, Partner Logistics and DHL has taken eight trucks a week off the road.

Transporting frozen pallet loads 80 miles from a Partner Logistics cold store warehouse in Wisbech, to a customer distribution centre in Daventry, has so far saved 4.5 tonnes of CO2 emissions.

A 44-pallet double-deck trailer with moving floor holds around 50 percent more than a conventional trailer, and so far this new form of truck has taken a total of 43 trucks off the road.

Eelco Schnabel, commercial director of Partner Logistics said: “We are very pleased to have worked with Birds Eye and DHL on this energy saving project. All of our European warehouses have been built with a focus on sustainability and we proactively try to reduce carbon emissions in any way we can.”

Birds Eye has estimated that now the double deck trailers are running regularly on this route they will see a reduction of 2% in their annual total road miles. Plans to extend the project to include further routes are underway.

Graham Watling, Birds Eye UK distribution manager, said: “Double deck trailers allow us to look at the best possible opportunities to improve the efficiency of our deliveries for our customers, whilst reducing our road miles. In our best week so far we have been able to take the equivalent of eight trucks off the road, saving over 300 litres of diesel.

These savings are a step in the right direction when it comes to achieving our goal of reducing carbon emissions by 15% by 2020 and we couldn’t have done this without the help of Partner Logistics, DHL and our end customers.”

Birds Eye selected the Partner Logistics 77,000 pallets capacity warehouse in Wisbech in 2010 for the UK storage of its frozen food products.