French Monoprix supermarket chooses rail and natural gas for delivery trucks

European supermarkets are quietly showing off that they want to protect the environment. This initiative, although not being so brave as Tesco's use of Modec electric vans, caught our eye.

Monoprix has bought 18 natural gas fuelled trucks from Renault as part of a delivery test project for its Monoprix and Monop' shops in Paris. The supermarkets will get deliveries as close as possible to the city center using rail freight, counting on Fret SCNF (the French railways) as a rail partner. Then the goods will be loaded onto these trucks and delived to Paris centre-ville shops. Monoprix, with 60 shops in inner Paris, expects to deliver 210,000 pallets (about 120,000 tons of merchandise). The project is expected to cut CO2 emissions by 280 tons and NOx emissions by 19 tons per year.

The trucks include special panelling for temperature control during transport, as well as a lift gate. Mechanically, they will use automatic Allison gearboxes and the refrigeration units will be able to run with the engine off, both to reduce tailpipe and noise pollution

This fleet is the first private French Natural Gas distribution fleet.

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[Source: NGV]

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