Bill Jacob advocates green GSE for United Parcel Service

Even after 24 years, Bill Jacob knows the exact date he started at UPS – Jan. 6, 1988. “It’s emblazoned in my head,” he says. “It was a monumental change.”

He was 38 years old at the time, had worked for one company for the past 16 years where he had moved up in the management ranks to take a job as a GSE mechanic – exactly where he’d started out his career – temporarily leaving behind his wife, a 10-year-old and a 4-year-old, plus a nice house in Atlanta, GA, to move into a rented one-bedroom apartment in Louisville, KY.

“I was a journeyman GSE mechanic all over again,” Jacob says.

But what a place to be one. His new employer, UPS, had just started its own airline and established a hub at Louisville International Airport. And in just a few years, Worldport would open – eventually all 5.2 million square feet of it.

If you were going to work your way up again, this was the time and the place.

UPS also believes in promoting from within. And soon enough, the powers that be, including the executive whose job Jacob currently has, recognized this new mechanic could do much more.

William J. Jacob, vice president, airline ground support equipment for UPS Airlines, oversees the acquisition, engineering and maintenance of 32,000 pieces of GSE and has spent 40 years in the GSE industry.

It was that dedication to the GSE industry that earned him our magazine’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

“Bill was always looking forward with his vision for the GSE industry, especially in the area of environmentally friendly equipment,” said one of his nominators. “As a personal mentor to all new-comers to the world of GSE, he’s shared that vision and had been a leader both within UPS as well as GSE manufacturers around the globe.”

GREEN GSE

UPS plans to cut its carbon footprint by 20 percent by 2020. Operating a fleet of 100,000 familiar brown package delivery trucks, UPS already boasts the largest private fleet of alternative-fueled vehicles. The company actually used electric trucks in New York in the 1930s. More recently, UPS has experimented with a number of different technologies for its trucks, including electric, CNG, LNG, propane, electric hybrid and hydraulic hybrid.

UPS Airlines, however, is also the world’s ninth largest airline with 500 airplanes engaged in almost 2,000 flights each day. Jacob, a well-known proponent of green GSE, has made sure that his operations play a big part in the company’s environmental initiatives.

Here’s what he had to say in a 2009 interview with Ground Support Worldwide:

“The last trend has been coming for many years — the need for transportation companies to consider the environment in daily operations. At UPS, we realize the need for more environmentally friendly fuels, more efficient equipment uses and we are exploring new technologies and methods to reduce our impact on the environment. There are challenges associated with such enhancements, including additional costs, but our industry should continue to find solutions to benefit both the environment and business.”

Here are a few highlights we’ve also covered in past issues:

Repowered more than 90 tugs running for a decade on their original diesel engines with new 2.8-liter, four-cylinder gasoline engines.
Installed electric GPUs to supply parked aircraft with ground power, eliminating almost 26 mobile, diesel-powered GPUs. (Also, Worldport has backup electric feeds from two substations of the local utility in lieu of diesel-powered generators.)
Stationed electric cargo loaders at Worldport, including models that regenerate their batteries each time the loader is moved up or down. (Keep in mind, much of the design of the sprawling Worldport allows planes to park closer to the facility, which eliminates, the need for excess powered GSE.)
Installed two Jet A fuel tanks with internal floating roofs that reduce volatile organic compound emissions.
Also, repowered more than 100 gasoline-powered tugs stationed in California with lower-emission gasoline engines per state regulations.

Let’s take a look at what Jacob has done lately:

Biodiesel: UPS installed two biodiesel tanks at Worldport last March to provide customized fuel for about 200 diesel-powered GSE.

One 30,000-gallon ank holds ultra-low sulfur diesel. The other 5,000-gallon tank holds pure biodiesel made in part with the Kentucky soybeans.

The setup allows the company to blend fuel right at the pump ranging from 5 percent to 20 percent.

“Most companies will typically buy biodiesel that’s already been blended directly by their suppliers,” Jacob explains. “But we can blend this as we see fit. We plan to work with our manufacturers to see what different ratios will mean. As long as our warranties are still honored, we’ll go as low as we can.”

Not only does the fuel burn cleaner, but Jacob says biodiesel’s lubricating properties help the equipment last longer than straight diesel.

Electric Cargo Tractors: Jacob was also working with Corvus Energy and its North American supplier, GTA Aviation, to install the company’s lithium ion battery technology into two cargo tractors.

“Electric definitely has its niche,” Jacob says. “But we haven’t found the right performance with traditional lead acid batteries. We pull heavy loads – as much 32,000 pounds – and for long distances, too – as long as two miles.”

Jacob had already shipped one of the tractors to Corvus for retrofit. He plans to test the equipment at Worldport and see how the lithium ion batteries stand up to the daily hauling. Corvus may have just as much to learn since this will mark the first time its batteries are put to the test in at an all-cargo airport.

LSI Rule: Finally, Jacob is building on an earlier accomplishment that we noted above in California. While the state’s “low spark ignition” rule required the retrofit, Jacob is implementing it at Worldport, swapping out old Ford 300 cubic-inch gas engines for four-cylinder versions.

“We’re required to do it in California, but we’re doing it in Louisville because we know we can save fuel – as much as 30 percent,” he says. “Plus, the engines produce 85 percent less harmful emissions. So we can save money and it’s the right thing to do for the environment.”

‘Harsh Task Master’

We talked with Bill Jacob, vice president, airline ground support equipment, UPS airlines, at the end of a busy week when his engineering team was in the middle of “building” an order for GSE, including cargo loaders, deicers and GPUs.

Before buying anything, Jacob’s team of engineers performs what it refers to as “PMI” or “preventive maintenance inspections.”

“We go out and crawl under that piece of equipment to make sure that it’s built to our standards,” he says. His GSE orders are typically for standard equipment, but with “UPS options.”

“We have certain ways, for example, that we want everything routed,” Jacob explains. “We don’t want hydraulic lines or wires to rub together because we know that up the line that is going to cause us difficulties.”

Here’s something that harkens back to Jacob’s management role at a regional UPS delivery center. (See our “Resume” sidebar, for more information.) UPS delivers more than 15 million packages every day. Reliability is key. And when “air” is late, as Jacob puts it, UPS still requires its office managers to don brown uniforms, get in their own vehicles and ferry late packages to the regular drivers.

Even after equipment is put in the field, Jacob’s department keeps a close tally on repairs and will call the manufacturer if problems occur too frequently.

To hear Jacob tell it, “too frequently” might mean as little as “one time.” He will then coordinate a campaign with the manufacturer to send out parts and information on the correct procedures to make the necessary installation.

Jacob admits that most the manufacturers he’s directly worked with for decades would consider the company “a ruthless task master.” Of course, the manufacturers wouldn’t be getting any orders without first passing months-long tests to get on the approved vendor’s list in the first place.

However, selling to UPS makes the products that much better for everyone. In some cases, those “UPS options,” later become standard equipment, Jacob says. And with thanks to UPS’ ability to trace every equipment breakdown, manufacturers can pinpoint problems with their own OEMs. Recently, Jacob said his company was having problems with a line of GPUs. Vibrations in the units were actually snapping off the shaft in the generators. The root cause was a problem in the generator itself, rather than assembly issues.

Resume

Jacob grew up a self-acknowledged “gear head” who loved the automobiles Detroit was turning out in the 1960s. He spent four years in the Navy (“I wanted to be a mechanic, but the Navy made me a radio man.”) and worked briefly at a chemical company in his native Long Island upon discharge in 1972.

Meanwhile, his father worked for Eastern Airlines at John F. Kennedy Airport and told his son about 10 GSE mechanic openings. Jacob ended up working for Eastern for the next 15 years:

1972-1977 – GSE mechanic mostly stationed at the airport’s old Hanger 9.
1977-1980 – GSE maintenance instructor at the airline’s Miami operations. (Jacob gets recognized for the first time with an ability to teach others to turn wrenches. It marks the first opportunity to mentor his fellow mechanics.)
1980-1988 – GSE fleet supervisor at the Hartsfield Airport. (“Not a lot of people remember this, but Eastern at one time had just as big a presence in Atlanta as Delta does today.”)

By this time, however, Eastern wasn’t the company is once was. Competition and management misdeeds ultimately drove the company into bankruptcy. On the lookout for other opportunities, Jacob found his way to UPS, which had just launched its own airline in 1988. Out of management, Jacob started all over again as a GSE mechanic in Louisville, KY.

Just four months into the new job, however, UPS managers and executives knew their new journeyman could do more.

1988-1990 – Held various management positions, including another stint at teaching GSE repair and maintenance.
1990-1994 – GSE division manager for the company’s West Zone. The area comprised 50 in the country’s West Coast, but also the Pacific Rim region. Jacob helped open new operations in South Korea and Japan.
1994-2001 – GSE engineering manager.
2001-2005 – Manager of UPS South New England District. His workforce was behind the wheel of one of 1,100 delivery trucks rather than tugs. (“They gave me an entirely different perspective by seeing the other side of the company’s air operations and what happens when ‘air’ is late.”)
2005-present – Vice President, Airline Ground Support Equipment, UPS Airlines.