As a trucking company, fuel costs can make up a significant portion of the expenses. However, there are ways to save on fuel costs without giving away the quality of your service. Here are four tips to help reduce fuel consumption and costs:
Use a fuel cost calculator: Before you can find ways to save fuel, you need to know exactly how much fuel you are using. Fuel cost calculators can help you determine your fuel cost for a load, which will help you understand how profitable a load may be. These calculators make the process of calculating a rough average extremely simple. Just plug in the distance of your route (km), the fuel efficiency of your vehicle (km/L), and the price of fuel at the pump (price/L).
Encourage fuel-efficient driving practices: Vehicles burn the most fuel when they accelerate, so maintaining a steady speed is one of the best ways to reduce fuel use on the road. Encourage drivers to adopt fuel-efficient driving habits such as using cruise control on highways and maintaining road space in front of the truck while navigating city traffic. The heavier a load is, the more fuel is required to move it, so not overloading your trucks is also a good practice.
Additionally, consider making your trucks more aerodynamic with the installation of angled bumpers, sun visors, or fairings. Air conditioning use can also increase fuel consumption by up to 10%, so consider rolling the windows down and turning off the AC at speeds up to 80 kilometres per hour when the weather allows.
Stick to fuel-efficient tires: Tires play a significant role in a vehicle’s fuel consumption, as reducing rolling resistance can significantly increase your truck’s fuel efficiency. Regularly checking tire pressures is the simplest way to improve your tires’ performance, as under-inflated tires significantly increase rolling resistance and cause unnecessary wear on the tires themselves. When buying tires, look into fuel-efficient types designed to reduce rolling resistance while still providing enough traction for safe driving. It’s also important to ensure all of your tires are filled to the same bar reading to create even weight distribution and prevent wasteful fuel use.
Avoid idling your fuel away: Idling, or leaving a truck’s engine on when the truck is parked, quickly adds up to a significant amount of fuel being burned. An idling vehicle can burn around 4.5 liters of fuel per hour and idle for as little as 10 seconds wastes more fuel than restarting the engine. Remind drivers to turn off their engines when they step away from the truck, and consider implementing idle reduction technologies such as auxiliary power units, which provide heating and cooling without running the engine.
Implementing these four tips can help you reduce your fuel consumption and costs. To identify which tactics are the most useful for your business, you may want to try one tactic at a time for a week or a month and make notes of how your fuel costs change accordingly. Paying for drivers to attend specialized courses for learning how to drive more fuel efficiently could also be a wise investment, as it is likely to lead to savings on fuel costs in the long term. Finally, consider working with a logistics provider like TruKKer, which offers data-led innovation to help reduce fuel consumption and costs.