Lineage recently highlighted transportation projects designed to reduce emissions and improve efficiency across its cold chain operations. The company, which provides temperature-controlled logistics services, is using electric yard trucks, renewable fuels, data analysis, and shipment consolidation to address transportation emissions and costs.

A Lineage facility in Seattle replaced an older-model diesel yard truck with an Orange EV e-TRIEVER zero-emission Class 8 terminal truck through a project supported by the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency and an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grant. 

The electric yard truck is expected to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, diesel particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, and other pollutants while providing a quieter operating environment with reduced vibration and engine heat. Lineage has deployed more than 30 electric, zero-emission yard trucks across its North American network. 

Lineage conducted an eight-week pilot using hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) on routes totaling approximately 12,240 miles. The pilot showed an average reduction of about 92% in CO2 emissions and an average improvement of about 8% in fuel consumption.

Through its Lineage Velocities multi-vendor consolidation program, Lineage combines shipments from different vendors that are moving to similar destinations into shared truckloads, helping reduce partial loads, empty miles, and wasted fuel. Lineage also uses transportation data to set miles-per-gallon expectations for carriers and reviews its highest-emission lanes to identify optimization and alternative-mode opportunities.

What this means for the trucking industry

Lineage’s projects show how temperature-controlled logistics operations can address transportation emissions through multiple approaches rather than relying on a single technology. Electric yard trucks can reduce emissions from on-site equipment, while HVO, load consolidation, and transportation data offer additional ways to reduce fuel use and improve fleet efficiency.