This morning, despite the $3.50 per gallon price tag, Jay Holgate fueled his Prius for about $21. That’s great, considering he’ll get about 50 miles to each gallon. And that’s even better, considering he has to multiply those numbers across the seven vehicles in his courier fleet.
“When we first started back in 1999, we were doing what every other courier company was doing, which was putting a lot of miles on cars, using a whole lot of fuel to get things delivered,” Holgate says.
Then, around 2007, several factors forced him to reconsider how he did business. One, of course, was the economy; the real estate dive hit the courier industry hard, and several competitors closed shop. On top of that, Holgate’s son was diagnosed with autism at a time when authorities suspected environmental factors as a cause.
Deciding to make better use of resources for the sake of the city and the people in it, Holgate’s company rebranded as Green Express. It began distancing itself from the traditional courier model of chugging fuel and averaging 20 miles per gallon. Holgate began evaluating every operation through “green” lenses that matched his new fleet of hybrids — which earned Green Express status as the first courier company in the country to go green.
“For us, it really just had to do with doing the right thing,” says Holgate, the managing partner. “In a city with 5 million people, if you have the ability to use cars that use less fuel and put less emissions in the air, you should do it.”
He soon learned otherwise: In the business world, doing the right thing isn’t always good enough. Sure, some customers were drawn to green alone, but the majority still asked prices first.
“Ultimately, in this town, every good decision is based on the bottom line,” he says. “Unless a businessperson can find a financial reason to do it, they’re most likely not going to do it. Our market is still price-driven, so I would never tell anybody to go out there if they’ve got a great green idea and just go do it based on doing the right thing. It doesn’t matter how good the idea is if it doesn’t save people money. It’s got to have a lot more value than that.”
