The City of Mesa, Az. is steadily switching over its entire fleet of garbage trucks to CNG.Half of the city garbage trucks in Mesa, Az. are now running on compressed natural gas (CNG) as city officials there continue efforts to switch the entire fleet to the alt fuel within the next four years.
Mesa, which is about 15 miles east of Phoenix, recently opened a CNG station at its solid waste division which provides fuel for 35 sanitation trucks, or half of the city’s trash truck fleet. Before then, the city, which has its own natural gas utility, had leased a CNG station.
Mesa cites lower emissions, quieter running engines, less truck maintenance and cheaper CNG prices as factors for making the switch from diesel to CNG. The city is currently saving about 25 percent in fuel costs over diesel.
“There’s a revolution of technology in the energy industry,” Frank McRae, director of the city’s energy resources department, told eastvalleytribune.com. “CNG is at least a bridge fuel, if not a permanent long-term fuel.”
Mesa, which expects to have three more CNG trucks by the fall, reports that they’re dealing with a 10-month waiting period on truck orders. The city’s first CNG truck was delivered in November 2012.
Other trucks Mesa has running on CNG include six pickups at its Transportation Department and five pickups at Energy Resources.
