Tracking and Fuel Costs

How Can Vehicle Tracking save you Money on Fuel Costs?

As the cost of fuel continues to rise, many companies are looking to reduce the amount of fuel they’re using in order to save them money. There are a lot of things that can be done to reduce the amount of fuel being used and vehicle tracking is one of them.

When a vehicle is idling it can use fuel unnecessarily and stopping this idle time can be one of the easiest ways to cut down on fuel costs.

Why do vehicles remain idle if they don’t need to?

There are a number of reasons that a vehicle can remain idle, particularly if the driver is in their vehicle for long periods of time. Lorry drivers can sometimes spend a few days in their cabin – often sleeping there at night and Bus and Coach drivers keep their vehicles running during winter months to keep the heaters on.

Obviously, a driver spending this much time in a vehicle will want it to be as comfortable as their home. Warm at nights and during the winter, yet cool during the summer. Because of this, when they stop – be it for dropping off deliveries, waiting to collect passengers or just stopping for a rest – they can leave their vehicle running. This will cause fuel to be used even if the vehicle isn’t moving.

What effect does this have?

This can add unnecessary mileage to a vehicle, potentially shortening its life span. Not only is it losing fuel while it is running, but all this mileage will age the vehicle. The older the vehicle is, the worse its fuel economy gets, thus losing further fuel in the long term.

What will vehicle tracking achieve?

Vehicle tracking has many uses, the basic concept of a tracker is to make the fleet manager aware of the movements and habits of a particular vehicle. Vehicle tracking can monitor speeds, which in some cases is much needed. A lot of delivery companies want their packages delivered as quickly as possible, and speed is of high importance these days when it comes to making deliveries. Because of this, many drivers use this as an excuse to exceed the speed limit. This can cause the company or the driver fines and can also lose you competent drivers, if they are going over the speed limit.

The other reason why you may want to track vehicle speeds is because going higher speeds can significantly reduce fuel efficiency. If you can keep track of which drivers are going over the limit, you can take steps to ensure they understand why they shouldn’t be doing this. You can also monitor people of a period of time, so you can see which drivers are consistently exceeding the limit. This isn’t about tracking the drivers, but more making sure that you are getting the most out of your fuel consumption.

As well as speed, vehicle tracking can show you when a vehicle is stopped but still idling, when it is switched off entirely, and of course when it is on the move. This can be handy as it enables you to see which vehicles stop the most often, for how long and for what reason. Knowing this information can help your company to provide better solutions to why the drivers have left the engine running.

For instance, if a driver leaves the vehicle running while they are going to make a delivery, and you find that it’s because they want to leave their air conditioning on, you can think of alternative ways to keep the cabin cool while they’re making the deliveries. The same if they want to keep the heating on, offering up other solutions such as adding a company uniform jacket may help solve the problem of why some vehicles are kept running. You can monitor which drivers stop the most, and if you seem to find a common problem, you can solve it throughout the whole country – giving every employee different options and essentially saving you lots of money in fuel costs.

All in all, there are many different uses for a vehicle tracker and if you’re looking to save money, this is a simple and easy way to keep track of your vehicles and make sure they are not using fuel unnecessarily.

For working out which tracker is right for you or to discuss additional options such as driver Fobs, then please don’t hesitate to contact us at Vehicle Security Solutions on 01562 544108 or email us at info@vehiclesecuritysolutions.co.uk