British Columbia Courier Company Launches Hydrogen-Powered Fleet

British Columbia-based Geazon Eco-Couriers announced the launch of North America’s first hydrogen-powered courier fleet.

“Geazone is committed to providing a fast, reliable, affordable and sustainable delivery service with the customer in mind, and this new hydrogen-powered zero-emission fleet will help us achieve this,” said Geazone president and CEO Andrew Mitchell. “We believe all businesses can be champions of sustainability and we want to help lead this change.”

Geazone Eco-Courier provides sustainable delivery services, third party logistics and freight services to businesses across Vancouver Island and Vancouver. Their 40 new Toyota Mirai fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) are powered by hydrogen.

“In places where the fueling infrastructure exists – as it does in BC – hydrogen-powered FCEVs really are the perfect zero-emission solution for organizations with fleets of high-use vehicles,” said Stephen Beatty, vice-president, corporate at Toyota Canada Inc. “We commend Geazone for taking this bold and innovative step for their business, and we hope their fleet of Toyota Mirai will help demonstrate the value of FCEVs to other fleet owners looking to reduce their carbon footprint.”

Earlier this year, Toyota announced it was partnering with ride-share leader Lyft to make available a similar fleet of zero-emission FCEVs for ride-share drivers in the Vancouver area.

Geazone’s launch of its hydrogen-powered courier fleet is partly a result of changes in the economy brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We’d already been operating as an eco-courier with battery electric vehicles, but when COVID arrived, we had to make some changes,” Mitchell said. “A lot of our business-to-business client base dried up. We pivoted to a business-to-consumer model for final mile delivery by courier. At the same time, we were also looking at adapting our fleet to hydrogen. When I saw the Toyota Mirai, I was excited. I took one for a test drive and a few days later, came back and told them I wanted 40 of them, right then and there. A few weeks later, we added the first batch of FCEVs to our fleet.”

Geazone plans on expanding their hydrogen-powered fleet in the coming months.