Introduction
Fuel costs are one of the biggest expenses for fleets. It pays greatly to cut down on fuel consumption. Azuga technologies can help reduce a fleet’s fuel costs in a number of ways.
In this article, we outline how to calculate fuel consumption for a fleet vehicle. In addition, we explain four common problem areas for fleets where Azuga technologies can effectively reduce fuel costs. These include idling, inefficient routing, unauthorized vehicle use, and speeding.
How to Calculate Fuel Consumption for a Fleet Vehicle
When we talk about reducing fuel costs we are talking about reducing fuel consumption. To understand this, it is important to understand how to calculate fuel consumption. It helps to be able to estimate fuel costs when trying to reduce them. The formula to calculate fuel consumption for a fleet vehicle is miles driven divided by the quantity of fuel used.
In order to calculate a fleet vehicle’s fuel consumption first fill up the tank and reset the odometer. Then let the driver drive as usual. When the vehicle is ready to be refueled, note the number of miles it has driven and how many gallons of fuel were required to refill the tank. Finally, do the calculation. For example, if you added 100 gallons of fuel to your vehicle and it drove 1200 miles your equation would be 1200/100 = 12.
Problem Areas Where Azuga Reduces Fuel Consumption
There are four common driving issues that affect fleet fuel consumption. They are idling, inefficient routing, unauthorized vehicle use, and speeding. Fleets should estimate fuel costs and see where their drivers are going over.
Azuga fleet tracking solutions can be used to work out fleets’ operational problems. Tracking solutions can resolve the information gap between mobile workers and operations management. This section will outline the top ways that fleets waste fuel and explain how Azuga technologies can help effectively tackle these problem areas.
Idling
Idling can be the source of a huge waste of fuel for fleets. Idling steals over 17% of a vehicle’s fuel’s energy according to the United States Department of Energy.
For drivers in an 8-cylinder vehicle or light truck, each hour of engine idle time burns just over half a gallon of fuel. Medium and heavy-duty trucks burn even more fuel idling—close to one gallon an hour.
Engines operate at a lower temperature when drivers are idling, which leads to inefficient fuel use. As a result, residue deposits are left on the vehicle’s plugs and cylinders. This can further decrease the efficiency of the vehicle’s engine over time.
How Azuga Helps Fleets Tackle Excessive Idling
Azuga monitors the engine’s status and can tell when a driver is idling and send a real-time alert to the fleet manager. In addition, Azuga provides engine idle reports from the vehicle’s onboard computer — this provides greater visibility and helps drivers identify themselves when they are idling excessively.
Inefficient Routing
How vehicles are routed during a shift can add extra fuel costs to your business. Poor routing can be due to a number of things. One culprit is un-monitored workers. Sometimes drivers are manipulating the system by accumulating extra miles as a way to increase the amount they get reimbursed for mileage, or just to waste time. Other times drivers go off-route for lunch or to meet friends. These small infractions can add up and cost your fleet a great deal in extra fuel costs.
Another way fleets permit inefficient routing is via crisscrossing routes. Planning routes using paper maps is not efficient. Poor dispatching decisions also often lead to inefficient routing.
How Azua Helps Fleets Combat Inefficient Routing
By providing real-time visibility on where each vehicle within the fleet is, Azuga technologies helps dispatchers select the closest driver for service requests. Azuga also includes geo-fence, route, and landmark tools that help keep drivers on schedule by selecting for key route corridors, distributors, or customers.
Another great feature of Azuga technologies is a real-time map view with geofence and location alerts that supply managers with notifications of vehicle exit or entry from preselected areas.
Unauthorized Vehicle Use
Unauthorized vehicle use can be a big source of fuel costs for some fleets. When drivers choose to utilize company-owned vehicles for unauthorized use they increase vehicle wear and tear, service costs, fuel costs, and company risk. It is especially important for businesses that let drivers take their vehicles home at night to make sure that the vehicle is strictly used for business purposes.
How Azuga Helps Fleets Reduce Unauthorized Vehicle Use
Azuga technologies can report on the use of fleet vehicles at unauthorized times to help managers easily detect after-hours use of company property. Instant alerts are available that indicate when a vehicle status changes. This provides managers with immediate notification of vehicle usage. Another useful feature of Azuga is activity reports that provide detail on locations, dates, routes, and times that fleet vehicles are in use.
Speeding
Gas mileage generally decreases quickly at speeds above 50 mph, and each fleet vehicle has a different speed for optimal use of fuel.
According to the United States Department of Energy, “you can assume that each 5 mph you drive over 50 mph is like paying an additional $0.15 per gallon for gas”. That equates to roughly an 8% increase in fuel costs. Larger vehicles are impacted even more by speeding.
How Azuga Helps Fleets Cut Down on Speeding
Fleet managers can see real-time speeding alerts with Azuga technologies. This includes custom speed settings so managers can pinpoint who is speeding as it happens and fix the problem before it gets out of hand. By providing historical reports on vehicles that include vehicle speed and other aggressive driving behaviors to help isolate wasteful and dangerous driving habits. Historical reports are helpful for determining which drivers may need extra training, remediation, or enrollment in safe-driving programs. Anything that will incentivize the driver to be safer.
Conclusion
Cutting down on wasteful driver practices can decrease a fleet’s fuel costs. Azuga technologies can help fleets identify wasteful fuel habits in drivers so they can be rectified.
In this article, we went over how to calculate fuel consumption for a fleet vehicle. Additionally, we explained four common problem areas for fleets where Azuga technologies can effectively reduce fuel costs. These are idling, inefficient routing, unauthorized vehicle use, and speeding.
To partner with a cutting-edge technology company that can help your fleet effectively reduce fuel costs go to https://www.azuga.com/.
