McDonnell Douglas Employees Jump On The Vanwagon
Vanpooling is a convenient way for many McDonnell Douglas employees at four of its sites across the country to commute, and to help clean the air. McDonnell Douglas operates more than 450 vanpools. In the St. Louis, Missouri area alone, nearly 245 vanpools bring 2,500 employees back and forth to work each day. For those employees, some of whom commute nearly 115 miles one way, vanpooling is the only logical alternative to driving alone.
“We pioneered vanpooling at our St. Louis location in 1979,” said Greg Lyle, manager of vanpool operations in St. Louis. “There were some government incentive programs that got us interested in trying it, and it really just snowballed. The cost of gas was going up, and people really liked vanpooling.”
McDonnell Douglas, a military and commercial aircraft manufacturing company, is the largest defense contractor in the country, and the largest employer in Missouri. Today, nearly 9 percent of the more than 32,000 employees at its approximately one dozen locations in St. Louis participate in the vanpooling program. Nationwide, McDonnell Douglas employees in St. Louis; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Huntington Beach, Long Beach and Santa Anna, California put nearly five million miles on their vans annually.
In St. Louis alone, according to Lyle, vanpooling saves more than 4 million gallons of gas and 50 million commuter miles each year. It also is responsible for reducing the amount of air pollution produced by vehicle emissions.
At its St. Louis location, employees pay all the actual costs of running the vanpools, including gas, maintenance and leasing costs. Costs in St. Louis range from a minimum of $12.50 per week to a maximum of about $34. Costs are contained through a self-insurance policy, competitive maintenance contracts, and a new universal gasoline credit card which streamlines the processing of charges for gas purchases.
Lyle recently spearheaded the design of a “universal gas credit card” that is expected to save McDonnell Douglas $650,000 annually. After talking with the company’s vanpool drivers and learning that they used 11 different oil companies in St. Louis alone, Lyle got help from Amoco Oil and the American Petroleum Institute to produce the McDonnell Douglas Van Pool Universal Gas Card. The card will eliminate the use of 7,000 four-part forms and streamline operations.
“Initial $50 cash advances were returned, expense report submittals were changed to monthly (instead of every time a driver needed gas), forms are estimated to drop to approximately 3,000 annually, and our office productivity has increased,” said Lyle, summing up the impact of the new approach to keeping van gas tanks full.
What’s in it for McDonnell Douglas?
Employees enjoy the savings and personal benefit of having a vanpooling program, and, in their communities, McDonnell Douglas is recognized as a corporation that is concerned about the environment and its employees.
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