Implementing Environmental Efficiency in Freight Trucking

Operating in Mississauga for over twenty-five years, Musket Transport is a transportation and logistics company specializing in intermodal container transportation. With four locations across Mississauga, Musket provides broad-scale trucking throughout Southern Ontario, Quebec, and the northeast United States, as well as a specialized driver training program. With their notable boost in environmental initiatives since 2016, Musket continues to grow its business while upholding a corporate social responsibility mandate. Within the transportation sector, Musket’s green initiatives are aimed both at responsible business practices and the inherent cost-savings of fuel efficiency in their day-to-day operations.

Trucking companies face unique challenges when considering ways of reducing their environmental impacts. The transportation sector amounted to just under a quarter of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2017, of which freight trucks represent the largest share of all modal types, representing approximately one-third of total transportation emissions.11Interview with Sophia Sniegowski Begidzhanov, Corporate Communications Officer, May 24, 2019. As a cost often overlooked in the retail price of goods, transportation providers are challenged by the persistent drive for lower prices. As such, the freight transportation industry is structured on single-digit profit margins, a fact which poses challenges to companies’ abilities to invest in energy and fuel efficiency.22“Greenhouse Gas Emissions by Economic Sector,” Natural Resources Canada, https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/environmental-indicators/greenhouse-gas-emissions.html#transportation.

Lean profit margins in freight trucking are a major barrier to mitigating pollution. To reduce tailpipe emissions, trucking companies are primarily reliant on truck manufacturers’ technological innovations, which improve fuel efficiency and aerodynamics. Such innovations are ongoing, but necessitate significant investment from trucking companies to implement greener fleets. For a mid-size company like Musket Transport, such investments can be a strain on financial resources. With its recent purchase of 160 Volvo VNL 740’s—one of the most fuel-efficient trucks on the market—Musket has demonstrated their commitment to reducing tailpipe emissions.

Beyond its core business, Musket Transport operates Commercial Heavy Equipment Training Limited (CHET), a driver training school from which Musket hires 80% of all graduates. Corporate Communications Officer Sophia Sniegowski notes that CHET was founded in response to the barriers to employment for would-be drivers. For one, CHET provides hands-on driving experience that bolsters drivers’ capabilities to secure the necessary insurance coverage for employment. In addition, the training program provides nearly double the driving hours mandated by the Ontario Ministry of Transportation, thereby ensuring that drivers are well-prepared for a wide range of issues they might face on the road.

Sniegowski notes that truck drivers take great pride in their vehicles, which serve both as a workplace and a “second home.” Musket Transport validates drivers’ attachment to their vehicles by rewarding fuel-efficient drivers with unique decals. Musket also fosters fuel-efficient driving habits from the beginning as part of its CHET program. By incentivizing fuel efficiency and tracking progress using dashboard data, Musket’s driver engagement strategies recognize drivers as crucial to an environmentally conscious business model.

In 2018, several Musket Transport employees took part in Climate Smart, a certification program offered through the Mississauga Board of Trade. Climate Smart is a BC-based company that empowers companies to lower their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through broad and comprehensive audits focusing on energy efficiency, fuel consumption, and waste management. Through Climate Smart, Musket staff implemented technological tools enabling them to quantify and track the company’s overall GHG emissions. Setting 2016 as a baseline figure, Musket tracks its annual progress toward greater energy efficiency.

Musket Transport staff have also worked with Credit Valley Conservation, participating in the latter’s Greening Corporate Grounds program to consult on how to make their facilities more environmentally-friendly. Despite the challenges of greening a container yard, Musket is mitigating dust by paving its facilities, engaging employees in tree-planting programs, and looking to implement green roofs in select areas.

Musket’s facilities include comprehensive repair and reuse areas for vehicles and equipment. Given their focus on intermodal shipping containers, opportunities for reuse and adaptation are open to the myriad creative ways containers are used. Once no longer viable for trucking, Musket’s containers are often repurposed—from the occasional sale to an individual buyer, to Musket’s own reuse of containers as temporary offices during periods of expansion and growth.

Musket Transport’s business is growing, and employee turnover rates are at a mere 1%. Between their CHET driver training and low turnover, Musket has little need for driver recruitment marketing. As such, they focus on other forms of community partnerships and engagement, as in sponsorship of The Work of Wind: Air, Land, Sea. During the 10-day contemporary art festival, artist Julian Oliver’s project HARVEST was sited at Musket’s location: at the back of the container yard, two 2-kilowatt wind turbines powered a cryptocurrency mining computer, which generated funds to be subsequently donated to support climate change research. At the front of Musket’s facility, visitors could see live data and video from the mining process projected inside a shipping container.

Musket’s support for the Blackwood’s programming will continue in early September 2019, with the trans-border shipment of Gediminas and Nomeda Urbonas’ artwork Futurity Island to MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts. First commissioned for The Work of Wind: Air, Land, Sea, Futurity Island will return to the home campus of both architects via a high-efficiency Volvo truck, and its exhibition will be activated by a series of public programs.