ANDERSON — There will be a lot of big, brown UPS trucks coming off the Freightliner Custom Chassis Corp. lines in Gaffney over the next year, some 2,000, according to Director of Sales and Marketing Jonathan Randall.

Included in the order is 200 hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), an order United Parcel Service called “the largest commercial order of such trucks by any company.” There will also be 300 compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles and about 1,500 conventional diesel UPS delivery vans, Randal told the Anderson Independent-Mail.

He said the work on the conventional diesel trucks will start before the end of the month, adding work on the 200 HEV trucks will continue into next year.

UPS and Freightliner officials declined to discuss the value of the order, a fact noted by the online news service MarketWatch, which got a Stuttgart, Germany-based official of Freightliner’s parent company to say the manufacturer’s suggested retail price is more than $100,000 each. That would bring the MSRP for the total deal for the alternative fuel trucks to more than $50 million, the Daimler spokesperson said.

MarketWatch noted that large fleet deals in the automotive industry typically include deep discounts.

In a separate statement, Daimler Truck North America’s Freightliner Custom Chassis division said it has more than 160 hybrids in service since 2004, when it became the first manufacturer to introduce the fuel sippers into fleet operations. This includes 25 delivered to UPS in May 2007.

Daimler said the hybrid-electric power train achieves a 40 percent improvement in fuel economy and a 90 percent reduction in emissions compared to the non-hybrid version.

UPS said the 200 trucks are expected to save 176,000 gallons of fuel annually and reduce CO2 emissions by 1,786 metric tons each year. This is the equivalent of removing almost 100 conventional UPS trucks from the road for a year, it added.

UPS said the 300 CNG vehicles will be deployed later this year.