This summer at least three major food retailers made news for actions designed to lessen the environmental impact of their trucking operations:

• 

  Safeway, Pleasanton, Calif., announced last month that all of the 79 big-rig tractor-trailers used to deliver food to stores in its Arizona division will operate with cleaner-burning B20 biodiesel fuel, a blend of 20% pure biodiesel and 80% petroleum diesel.

• In July, Schnuck Markets, St. Louis, acknowledged that its fleet of 100 trucks will incorporate a fuel additive that improves fuel economy — DiesoLIFT from International Fuel Technology, St. Louis — following a four-month field test.

• For being the first company in the United Kingdom to run a fleet of battery-powered zero-emission home delivery vans in one marketing area of its Tesco.com home shopping site, Tesco received the Grand Prix Online Green Award in July from the Interactive Media in Retail Group, London.

These and other retailers and wholesalers are demonstrating that, while the bulk of their “green” activity has focused on in-store operations, there is much to be gained in terms of both environmental benefits and cost savings by taking a different approach to their trucking fleets.

Of course, retailers have long been searching for ways to cut their transportation costs, such as backhauling or simply shipping goods more efficiently. For example, by making sure that its store-bound trailers are filled as completely as possible, Meijer, Grand Rapids, Mich., has reduced the number of deliveries it makes. Publix Super Markets, Lakeland, Fla., has reduced its number of store deliveries by studying the unique delivery requirements of each of its 907 stores.

But as more retailers and wholesalers attempt to reduce their “carbon footprint” and thus their contribution to global warming, more attention is being paid to the trucks themselves — their design, usage and fuel consumption.

Some retailers, such as Wal-Mart Stores, H.E. Butt Grocery and Hannaford Bros., are working with the Environmental Protection Agency in its SmartWay Transport Partnership. (See story, this page.) The program requires companies to measure the efficiency of their freight operations with EPA-developed tools that quantify the benefits of a number of fuel-saving strategies.

As part of its participation in SmartWay, Hannaford, for example, has integrated new aerodynamic tractors into its fleet, installed on-board computer systems, reduced tractor idling and used B20 biodiesel fuel in its warehouse yard tractors.