The Palm Beach County Fleet Management Division, of the Facilities Development and Operations Department, has changed to ethanol E10 fuel for county vehicles. All county fuel sites are now dispensing the new fuel. Using E10 will save the county 300,000 gallons of gasoline a year.
This new fuel blend, composed of gasoline and ten percent ethanol, will be used for the entire county fleet including Constitutional officers, Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, Fire-Rescue, Airports, the Water Utilities Department and all departments. Palm Tran, the county’s public transportation service, uses biodiesel that is a mixture of regular diesel and naturally grown resources.
Fleet Management has several other green initiatives already in place. Palm Beach County Fleet Management is thirteenth in the nation of all commercial and governmental fleets for the number of hybrid vehicles, according to the October 2007 issue of Automotive Fleet magazine. The county’s fleet is composed of 157 hybrid vehicles, and will have 200 by the end of 2008. Palm Beach County Fleet Management will be the first government in southeast United States to purchase medium-duty hybrid bucket trucks this year.
Other green practices include using propane for various pieces of equipment, downsizing the fleet (not buying large vehicles unless necessary for a particular mission), encouraging less idling of vehicles and establishing a stringent preventative maintenance program. Fleet Management also started a program for using nitrogen-filled tires three years ago.
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