For the purpose of SmartWay membership, you are a multi-modal carrier if freight shippers can contract with you to haul their goods; you move more than 5% of your mileage on trucks you own or control; and you contract with a mix of truck, rail, air and marine carriers to move the remaining portion of your mileage.
If that describes your operation, you should be interested in SmartWay’s updated environmental performance and carbon assessment tool for use by multi-modal carriers. The tool will allow you to include your rail operations along with your truck operations to create composite emissions factors for your overall operation.
In recent years, SmartWay engineers have been working on new tools and performance benchmarking that cover more modes of the supply chain, that are easy to use and provide a balance between information generated and the effort to collect that information. The partnership recently published new tools for carrier, shipper and logistics partners. While the new quantification tool for multi-modal partners is currently limited to truck and rail operators, the partnership is working on the ability to add consideration of emissions due to transportation by marine and air carriers in the future.
Multi-modal carriers are now able to join four other types of transport companies as full members of the SmartWay Partnership: truck carriers, freight shippers, logistics companies and rail carriers. By using the new tool, multi-modal carriers will be able to assess their freight operations, calculate their fuel consumption and its resulting carbon footprint. When you begin working within the tool, you will be asked to check a box stating that you agree to the terms of the partnership agreement. This agreement must be renewed annually.
Upon approval of a multi-modal carrier fleet tool submission, a carrier will be identified as SmartWay Multi-modal Carrier on EPA’s website on the “SmartWay Partner List” and in a database used by freight shippers to identify companies that meet SmartWay’s annual requirements. Carriers that meet SmartWay’s logo criteria are allowed to use its partner logo on marketing and promotional material. Additionally, carriers that meet the highest standards of environmental and fuel-efficiency performance are eligible to receive the SmartWay Excellence Award.
To join the partnership, carriers must commit to:
• Measure and report to EPA on an annual basis the environmental performance of your fleet(s) using EPA’s SmartWay Multi-modal tool.
• Have performance results posted on the EPA SmartWay website.
• Agree to submit supporting documentation to EPA for any data used to complete this tool and agree to an audit of this data upon request.
In return, the Partnership commits to:
• Promote company participation in the partnership by posting partner names on the SmartWay website and, with permission of the partner, in related educational, promotional and media materials.
• Provide companies with industry-wide performance benchmark data as this data becomes available.
• Assist partners in achieving emission and fuel usage reduction goals.
Joining the SmartWay Partnership is not a trivial activity. The SmartWay Multi-modal Carrier Fleet tool is designed in Microsoft Excel Forms and requires a 2003 or later version of Microsoft Excel and, of course, adequate hardware to run it. It also requires that you accumulate information for the last calendar year for which you have a full 12 months of data. This means that you have data from January of the calendar year through December of the same year. The commitment is substantial, but the return is also substantial when you consider the many shippers that are requiring SmartWay membership of their carriers.
Take the first step, visit www.epa.gov/smartway/partnership/multimodal.htm.
