Improve Driver Behavior and Cut Fuel Costs with L3Harris Driving Simulators
Training is crucial for changing and improving driver behavior, including behavior that can increase fuel economy. Some of the safest and most effective training can be conducted by using driving simulators, which mimic the feeling of driving without getting behind the wheel.
Best of all, the simulators require no fuel to be able to use them, so drivers can practice scenarios repeatedly until they break their bad habits.
Contact L3Harris today to learn more about our range of driving simulators and how they can benefit your fleet.
Fuel is the largest expense for 32% of fleet companies (see the full report). Fuel consumption seems like a fairly straightforward process, but there are ways to improve it - which is where fuel management comes in.
But, what is fuel management? How can one person keep track of an entire fleet’s fuel usage? Read on to learn more.
What Is Fuel Management?
Fuel management is tracking the amount of fuel that’s used by individual drivers and how often vehicles are refueled.
The main goal is to reduce fuel costs by improving the drivers’ fuel economy. Fuel economy is how far a vehicle can travel on a full tank of gas and is measured by miles per gallon (MPG).
It’s up to fleet managers to figure out how to boost fuel economy through different methods like training, tracking, and investing in new vehicles when needed.
5 Different Types of Fleet Fuel Management Monitoring
One helpful method of fleet fuel management is to monitor how often drivers are refueling their vehicles. There are four different ways to monitor fuel.
1. Card-Based Monitoring
Each driver is given a fuel card and individual pin to use when they need to purchase fuel. Not only does this make refueling easier for drivers, but it provides managers with detailed reports on how often each driver requires refueling and therefore their fuel consumption.
2. GPS Fleet Tracking
GPS Fleet tracking is a growing market. With a GPS device, a company can monitor the location, speed, idle time, accidents, and general mechanical condition of the vehicles in their fleet. This information allows them to better track fuel costs and behaviors.
3. On-Site Monitoring
If a fleet company is large enough, they’ll offer fueling on-site for drivers. As each driver fills their gas tank, it’s tracked and put into a report for the manager to look at. This provides fleet companies more control over the amount of fuel being used than other monitoring options.
4. Mobile Monitoring
This type of fuel monitoring involves having a separate fleet of fuel tankers at specific stations for commercial vehicles to get refills. Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology is used to identify each driver and vehicle for transaction tracking purposes.
5. Total Fuel Monitoring
This monitoring method uses both card-based and on-site monitoring techniques. This allows for a complete look at fuel consumption from start to finish and minimizes misinformation.
Benefits of Fuel Management
There may be hesitation to add more to a fleet manager’s responsibilities, but fuel management has many benefits for the company and its drivers.
Increases Profit Margin
First and foremost, effective fuel management will increase a company’s profit margins. As mentioned before, fuel is one of the largest expenses for fleet companies. Being able to improve a vehicle’s fuel economy is putting that money back into the company.
Even more so when fuel prices are volatile like they’ve been for the past few years.
Provides Useful Data
When an employee's job requires them to be away from a manager’s eyes, it can be hard to measure their performance beyond showing up and delivering goods on time. By monitoring their fuel use, managers can get an idea of how each employee drives.
It can also show if routes need to be reoptimized, if traffic is happening at different times than reported, and other information that would be difficult to gather otherwise.
Improves Overall Fleet Safety
Safety is a manager’s number one priority, but realistically, they can’t be in the passenger seat of each driver’s vehicle. Instead, fuel management monitoring allows for a bird’s eye view of each driver’s behavior.
Poor driving behavior like speeding, braking too hard, and aggressive driving could all lead to an accident. They also eat up fuel, so a manager can ask an employee about their driving behaviors when too much fuel is being used.
Managers then can provide training to avoid these behaviors that will save fuel and keep drivers safe.
Keeps Fleet Vehicles Well Maintained
When managers and drivers have so many tasks to do in a single day, maintenance can get left behind. When fuel management is added to a manager’s tasks, maintenance gets more priority because it can improve fuel economy.
For example, by maintaining proper tire pressure you can get 0.6 to 3% more gas mileage. Under-inflated tires will lower gas mileage by 0.2% for every psi drop in pressure.
