Reading: Michelin tyres help Yellowstone Park reduce carbon footprint

Michelin is helping Yellowstone National Park reduce its carbon footprint by equipping the parks fleet of vehicles with energy saving tyres.

Yellowstone is aiming to cut its greenhouse gas emissions in the park by 30 per cent over the next five years, and Michelin hopes its green tyres will make a major contribution to the eco-drive.

Don Baldwin, product category manager for Michelin Americas Truck Tyres, said: “Since Michelin became the official tyre of the Yellowstone Park Foundation in 2009, the park’s fleet managers have reported fuel savings on the first seven vehicles of as much as 20 percent compared to the previous tyres.

“This translates into emissions savings of more than 4 tons of CO2 each year per truck. In addition, the Michelin tyres are lasting twice as long as the previous tires, further reducing environmental impact.”

Michelin provides green, fuel-saving tyres to a wide variety of vehicles in the park ranging from haul trucks and dump trucks to front-end loaders and other service vehicles.

The tyre maker’s most popular wide single truck tyre, the Michelin X One XDN2 tyre, is the featured tyre on work trucks that operate both on- and off-road. Often unseen by visitors, these work vehicles are essential to maintaining the park for visitors, researchers and wildlife alike. Assuring that the fleet is fuel-efficient saves money but also significantly reduces carbon emissions.

In addition to providing tyres, Michelin field engineers are frequently on-site to consult with fleet managers about optimizing the tyres for the harsh Yellowstone environment. The idea behind this partnership is to help the park operate more efficiently, but also to learn as much as possible about how tyres respond in extreme conditions.

“Yellowstone is the ideal proving ground for developing the best tyres for our customers,” said Baldwin. “These trucks operate in extreme conditions all year round. From very low to high temperatures, in varying altitudes, in both dry and wet weather, and on all kinds of surfaces - from pavement to gravel, sand to snow - these trucks have to keep working. What we’re hearing is that Michelin tyres have helped them do that more efficiently.”

Denna Bowman, Head Office

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 29th, 2010 at 4:23 pm and is filed under Blogs, Michelin. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.