National postal operator Royal Mail has joined the Logistics Carbon Reduction Scheme (LCRS) in the UK, that is designed to help reduce carbon emissions from road freight. It has the largest fleet of trucks in the UK with 49,000 vehicles.

Royal Mail has taken on a number of measures to reduce its carbon footprint. These include aerodynamic fairings on its heavy goods vehicles that should reduce fuel consumption by 5%. It has also purchased 300 Cartwright Cheetah Fastback trailers as well as engaging with manufacturers to select a lighter weight trailer design, that should ensure that emissions are reduced even further.

Royal Mail fleet director Paul Gatti said: “Joining this voluntary scheme shows that Royal Mail acknowledges the carbon impact of its fleet and that we are very committed to managing it.

“It is also crucial that we continue to explore new ways to improve our fuel efficiency and reduce our impact on the environment given that we cover every single part of the UK.”

The LCRS is managed by the Freight Transport Association and is a free voluntary scheme to record, reduce and report carbon emissions from road freight transport. It has over 100 members that own around 77,000 vehicles nationwide.

Where car use in cities such as London seems to be falling this has been more than matched with the increase in delivery vehicles and carbon emissions are not falling as a result. One of the best way for the UK to tackle its emissions targets would be to encourage delivery companies to move to zero carbon vehicles, something certain companies such as UPS and FedEx are experimenting with at present. There are a number of initiatives on the freight side of the business being taken at present, including tests by the Transport Research Laboratory into ‘platooning’ trucks that could significantly reduce carbon emissions in the coming years.