McCullagh Coffee wants to be a fully environmentally sustainable company within a few years. So company executives decided its truck fleet had to get greener.

The coffee company has replaced its delivery trucks with five Sprinter utility vans, a switch expected to save the company more than $8,600 a year in diesel and gasoline costs.

The tall, boxy vans are a favorite of contractors and delivery companies like UPS, with an interior high enough for a person to stand upright. Warren E. Emblidge Jr., McCullagh's president and chief executive officer, said the Sprinters allow his company to organize its deliveries more efficiently while cutting its carbon footprint, and his employees give them favorable reviews.

"The whole idea is for a business to stay economically viable so we can keep employing people and improve the effect on the environment," Emblidge said. The vans cost about $50,000 each, including custom features that make them ergonomically friendly for employees.

Sprinters have been sold in the United States for about a decade, but they have gone through a recent change in who does the selling.

The vans are a product of Germany-based Mercedes-Benz. For years, they were rebadged for sale in the United States as Dodge, a Chrysler brand.

When that arrangement expired last year, Mercedes-Benz took back the sales, distribution and service of Sprinters from Chrysler LLC. Mercedes-Benz now sells them in this country under its own name or as Freightliner, an affiliate, said Dan Barile, a spokesman for Mercedes-Benz USA.

The Sprinter entered the U.S. market in 2001 under the Freightliner name. The Dodge-branded version was added in 2003, reflecting the corporate marriage of Mercedes-Benz's parent, Daimler, and Chrysler that occurred a few years earlier.

Daimler severed ties with Chrysler in 2007, and Chrysler has since aligned with Italy-based Fiat. Now that Chrysler's connection to the Sprinter vans is over, there is talk of Fiat bringing a commercial van to the U.S. market.

Freightliner's lone Buffalo-area outlet selling Sprinters, Fleet Maintenance in West Seneca, attracts a variety of customers for the vans, said Paul Degasperi, sales manager. "It's somewhat of a niche for someone that's going to run a lot of miles," he said. The vehicles get about 20 miles per gallon, he said. The fuel economy varies for competing commercial vans.

Fleet Maintenance sells a combination of new and used Sprinters, though Degasperi said used versions are hard to come by, since customers tend to hold on to them.

In a good year, Fleet Maintenance sells 65 to 75 Sprinters, Degasperi said. But that total has reached as high as 300, such as when a bunch will be bought up for conversion to recreational vehicles.

Mercedes-Benz sells Sprinters through about 75 of its dealers in the United States. None of its upstate New York dealers currently sells them, but the network is growing, Barile said.

For McCullagh Coffee, the vans are part of a larger plan for the Swan Street company: to become fully environmentally sustainable by its 150th anniversary in 2017.

"We do it piece by piece by piece," Emblidge said.

mglynn@buffnews.comnull