Six months after converting its shuttles to propane autogas, Sky Harbor Airport Parking has reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 20.8 tons and saved 50 percent in fuel costs compared with gasoline.
General Manager Brandi Casimir made the decision to switch the company’s fleet of 10 Ford E-450 passenger shuttles to propane autogas in October. Her initial motivation was to gain a competitive advantage in a market with new and growing competition. Sky Harbor Airport Parking researched other alternative fuels, including compressed natural gas, but upfront costs with the fuel were too high for Casimir.
When Blue Star Gas calculated the fleet’s potential savings and conversion cost with propane autogas, the decision was easy. “The numbers Blue Star Gas presented us with showed an affordable upfront cost with a projected return on investment in just seven months,” said Casimir.
Blue Star Gas converted the parking shuttles to the Prins Vapor Sequential Injection system and installed two 1,000-gallon on-site propane fueling tanks and dispensers. One of the deciding factors for Casimir on converting to the Prins System was that it could be transferred from vehicle to vehicle as Sky Harbor Airport Parking made future updates to its fleet.
“Our shuttles travel an average of 65,000 miles per year, making the eight-minute round-trip from the parking facility to the airport terminal nearly 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” she said. “We usually replace them after five years of service. In the end, we wouldn’t have converted our fleet unless this type of transition was possible.”
Sky Harbor Airport Parking is the latest customer Blue Star Gas has acquired as the company expands into the Phoenix area. Blue Star Gas currently services several fleets, has installed three fuelling stations and supplies more than a million gallons of propane autogas to the city each year.
According to Darren Engle, director of government relations for Blue Star Gas, bringing more low-carbon alternative fuels to Phoenix is important because of the city’s air quality challenges.
“Air pollution has resulted in negative national attention for Phoenix,” said Engle. “It’s a similar situation to what we’ve seen in Salt Lake City and other communities nationwide. Displacing gasoline and diesel with low-carbon alternative fuels like propane autogas is a clear path forward and a major part of the solution for many communities.”
