Volvo Trucks North America has announced its biggest-ever single purchase commitment for electric trucks to date, marking a major milestone in adopting zero-emission trucks in California.
Quality Custom Distribution (QCD), a Californian logistics company, will lease 14 Volvo VNR Electric models, which the national food service logistics supplier will deploy on its last-mile delivery routes in Southern California.
Deliveries of Class-8 battery-electric trucks to QCD start later this year and will be completed by 2023. The VNR Electric model went on sale last December, and multiple customer deliveries are scheduled throughout 2021.
“Earlier this month, we delivered QCD’s first VNR Electric to be used in its first-class distribution and logistics services,” said Peter Voorhoeve, President, Volvo Trucks North America. QCD has a fleet of 700 Class-8 tractors, more than half of which are Volvo VNR and VNL models.
The lease of these electric trucks and their associated charging equipment to QCD is being handled by Volvo Financial Services (VFS) with support in the form of a significant grant from California’s Mobile Source Air Pollution Reduction Review Committee (MSRC).
The new generation electric trucks are part of Volvo’s Low Impact Green Heavy Transport Solutions (LIGHTS) project, which is part of California Climate Investments. The project is aimed at transforming freight operations at two of the United States’ top trucking fleets.