LPG makes Smoky Mountains less smoky

© auto-gas.netAutogas means paying less and polluting less, so no wonder it's growing all around the world

Autogas in the US is mainly used by fleets of commercial vehicles, not individual drivers. Some of them are operated by transport companies, others by service providers or school districts, others still by national park rangers. And here's another example of the latter, this time at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, where six brand new LPG-powered Ford F-250 crew cab pickup trucks have just entered service. To enable easy refueling, two own sites were opened – one at the Park Headquarters Maintenance Facility in Tennessee, the other at the South District Maintenance Facility in North Carolina.

The motivation behind the purchase is hardly surprising – it's all about saving money and reducing impact on the environment. To boost the benefits in both respects, the park has even converted its grass mowers (self-propelled ones, we suppose) to run on autogas (mowergas?) instead of petrol. Interestingly, park authorities don't seem to put much emphasis on preventing petrol use at all cost – apparently, autogas is also used to improve the vehicles' range without having to return to base for refueling.

We increased our range, our driving range, by double, and decreased our down time substantially. So we have people in the field longer and it is less expensive.

Brian Bergsma, Deputy Chief of Facility Maintenance

By deploying LPG-powered pickup trucks, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is joining the Climate Friendly Parks programme, even though national parks are meant to preserve wildlife and environment by definition. Funding comes from a U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) and Department of Energy (DOE) initiative called the Clean Cities National Park Initiative, in this particular case represented by local DOE Clean Cities coalitions – the East Tennessee Clean Fuels Coalition and the Land of Sky Clean Vehicles Coalition. Let's hope more parks follow the good example set by the GSMNP – the more vehicles running on autogas, the better for everyone!