NEW YORK - City Harvest has retrofitted a truck in its fleet to be a biofueled, custom-made vehicle that uses less fuel and cuts down on the need for the truck to be idling, according to a report by The Associated Press.
Standard trucks have a refrigerated box car, and the truck must be left on to keep the contents cold. The new truck, which will be on the road starting Thursday, has a cold plate system which will store enough power while the truck is running to keep the truck's contents cold when the engine is off.
"It's a natural extension of our mission to serve hungry New Yorkers while carefully managing our resources," said Jilly Stephens, executive director of City Harvest.
She said the retrofit to add the cold plate technology cost $60,000, and was paid for by a donor. The technology is going into mass production, she said, and the other 15 trucks in the fleet will be replaced with new vehicles rather than retrofitted. The changeover should be complete by the end of 2009, she said to The Associated Press.
The new truck will use 1,023 less gallons of fuel than a standard truck. The fuel is B-20, a biodiesel. People will be able to recognize it, while the rest of the trucks are white with green logos, this truck is green with a white logo.
