As a business owner, you know that the cost of fueling your fleet vehicles is a HUGE expense when it comes to running your day-to-day operations. Typically, fuel costs for a fleet equate to about 60% of the operating budget, which makes it mission-critical to keep these costs down to maximize profits.
While fuel prices have remained relatively flat in recent years, recent economic conditions and supply chain issues are causing a spike in prices that is expected to last well into 2022. While the cost of fuel is impossible to control, the way you use the fuel and run your fleet is not. Here we will cover the top three “fuel thieves” that can impact your costs of operation and how Traxxis GPS Solutions can help you better manage and control those costs.
Making your Day More Efficient
How confident are you that your drivers are taking the MOST efficient routes during the day? Whether its drivers being dishonest, running a quick personal errand in your company vehicle, or just simply not paying attention to directions, every additional mile is coming out of your pocket. While most standard-level GPS tracking and location systems can help keep drivers honest, how can you be sure they are taking the most efficient route? Do you plan routes on a paper map like you’re setting off on the Oregon Trail? Do drivers just take their best guess at which stop they’ll make first?
You use software in every space of your business to increase productivity whether it’s for inventory, invoicing, payroll, or ordering lunch. Why wouldn’t you use technology to reduce your biggest expense? With our Route4Me optimized route planning you can reduce your fuel budget by as much as 30%, all while saving time and freeing up your employees to make more deliveries or appointments.
With our Route4Me Planning and Optimization Web-Based Software you can plan your entire fleet’s day in just 30 seconds. By utilizing traffic patterns, planning for construction, and scheduling appointments in the right order you not only save fuel (did you know UPS saves 10 million gallons per year simply bypassing left turns?), but also free up hours in employees’ days, reducing overtime costs and allowing you to service more customers in less time. You can even optimize the routes so that none of your drivers will have to drive with the sun in their eyes. I know, I hate that!
Combine all that with last-mile delivery tracking to notify clients of approach, SMS notifications of arrival, proof of delivery, and adjusted ETAs based on changing conditions that come up throughout the day, you’ll wonder why you ever ran your business any other way.
Poor Driving Habits Come with Major Costs
Now that you have your drivers on the right routes, our next area of opportunity is to look at HOW your drivers are driving those vehicles. Two of the quickest ways to eliminate fuel waste is by reducing idling time and controlling speeding. The average commercial vehicle burns approximately 1 gallon of gas for every hour of idling. Maybe that doesn’t sound like a TON, right? But some quick math shows that wasteful behavior like this can add up quickly and take a big chunk out of your bottom-line profits. Let’s say your driver idles for an hour while eating lunch, and another 15 minutes when they arrive at and before they leave each job location. On a perfect day, they may be getting to 6 jobs per day if you’re a service company that averages 1 hour per call made. That’s a loss of 2.5 hours per day, or 2.5 gallons wasted that day multiplied by $3 cost per gallon on that one truck. It doesn’t seem like much, but it will quickly add up. Across a 10-vehicle fleet, that’s a total loss of 25 gallons lost per day, or $75 per day in money lost for the entire fleet. Wow! Over $2,000 per month in fuel lost, getting Zero MPG idling.
With our GPS Tracking and Fleet Management Solutions, you can easily identify this behavior and fix it. Or take it to the next level and set our in-vehicle GPS devices up to coach the drivers with audible feedback every time this happens. Think they might turn those trucks off a little faster if they were reminded to not idle longer than 5 minutes. How about giving out a bonus to the employee that has the lowest idle time per month? I’d pay $50 to an employee to save over $2,000 per month, would you?
The other biggest gas waster? Johnny “Pedal to the Metal” Leadfoot. Speeding can drastically reduce fuel efficiency, not to mention, increase your company’s exposure and risk to potential accidents. The difference between driving 80 MPH vs 60 MPH is a drop of 30% in miles per gallon fuel efficiency. Whether you want to coach drivers through real-time in-cabin feedback or rank them based on how they drive your vehicles, we can help you monitor and coach drivers to maximize their fuel efficiency and increase those miles per gallon. By reducing jackrabbit starts, excessive speeding, and unnecessary idling, you’re putting money straight back in your pocket. Set the rules and let our solutions help drive your business to higher profits.
Who’s Gas (or snacks) are you Buying?
We all want to think the best of our employees, but did you know that fuel card fraud costs companies in your industry, and others alike, nearly $500 Million per year? Fraud typically comes in two forms, internal and external fraud. Internal fraud can be anything from unauthorized purchases (do your employees have a Red Bull budget?), personal fuel purchases for non-company vehicles, or “slippage”, where an employee may fill up multiple vehicles on a single transaction. External fraud, commonly seen with lost or stolen cards, can also take time to catch if the driver doesn’t report it immediately.
With fuel card controls in place, this can all be eliminated. Using our GPS technology integrated into our FuelBI Fuel-Card solution, we can help you identify and verify if the company vehicle is on-site at the time of the fuel purchase and ensure the number of gallons pumped into that vehicle matches the tank size for that vehicle make and model. See all your fuel transactions and any flagged events in one place.
At the end of the day, no matter how efficient you may be now, there is always room for improvement, and with a suite of products designed specifically to save you time and money, Traxxis GPS Solutions is a partner you can count on to take you to the next level.
For more information, visit Traxxis GPS.
