What causes excessive fuel consumption in a fleet?

Reducing costs is important in fleet management, but how can you control fuel consumption? With a few simple actions, you can cut excessive fleet control expenses and understand what causes excessive fuel consumption in fleets.

Did you know that driving habits directly affect the refueling bill? Rapid acceleration, speeding and harsh braking waste fuel and also increase vehicle wear. That is why driver training remains an important part of fuel management for a truck fleet.

If the manager already keeps tight control over the company’s transport fleet costs, you already have a way to identify fuel consumption issues and solutions.

To better understand what causes excessive spending when you work through the figures, keep reading.

Why does excessive spending occur?

Basically, excessive spending occurs when the vehicle has to exert more force than necessary to keep moving. Factors such as overloading therefore have a major influence on the fuel bill.

Also, never neglect tire care. Maintaining correct pressure and calibration helps both extend tire useful life (in Portuguese) and reduce fuel expenses. Tires below the recommended pressure reduce efficiency: as a reference, an average drop of 1 psi in tire pressure can reduce fuel economy by around 0.2%.

It is worth mentioning that if fuel consumption costs more than expected, something may be affecting the fleet budget as a whole. In other words, carry out a cost analysis to check all the company’s monthly expenses.

How to reduce expenses (and fuel consumption)

An operation’s costs cover several elements. The main ones include maintenance, drivers and fuel. But the bill goes far beyond this, including replacement parts, fines and tolls, for example.

To make appropriate, efficient cuts without affecting fleet operation and productivity, you need to compile all expenses. From there, you can identify what is dispensable and what is absolutely essential.

8 tips to save on fuel consumption

Tire calibration

Every vehicle has an owner’s manual listing best practices to help it perform throughout its useful life. One piece of information it contains is the recommended tire pressure.

Underinflated tires act as if the driver were driving with a foot on the brake. This means they make the vehicle use more fuel than it would with correct calibration; efficiency loss increases as pressure moves away from the manufacturer’s recommendation.

Since these vehicles are so heavy, ideally pressure should be checked at least every 15 days. This makes better use of tires and delays replacement while reducing fuel consumption.

Replacing filters and lubricants

Like tires, engine oil should be checked fairly regularly — at least once a week. Lubricants and filters must likewise be replaced at the right intervals, all specified in the same owner’s manual.

Using the manufacturer’s recommended oil grade also helps vehicle efficiency. As a fuel economy reference, technical guidance from FuelEconomy.gov indicates an improvement of 1% to 2% when using the engine oil recommended by the manufacturer.

In fact, all these tasks relate to a broader and very important issue:

Servicing and preventive maintenance

Preventive maintenance ensures that fleet trucks work properly. It helps anticipate issues and avoid greater losses over time by identifying parts and factors that could affect a transport operation. So remember:

The maintenance and servicing schedule must be followed strictly!

Any issue or failure in a vehicle can lead to much greater expenses and even vehicles out of service indefinitely — completely affecting the delivery schedule.

Small defects can also cause excessive fuel expenses. That is why the maintenance checklist is essential to ensure that filter, oil and lubricant replacements are always up to date.

Catalytic converter and exhaust

The catalytic converter is the truck component responsible for converting toxic gases into water, carbon dioxide and nitrogen. If it is not working correctly, it increases fuel consumption.

Likewise, vehicle temperature rises if there are defects in the internal catalytic converter and exhaust system. This consequently increases fuel expenses.

Ideally, these items should therefore also be checked regularly during preventive maintenance.

Fuel quality

Many transport companies already have partnerships and agreements with gas stations. However, many others still keep looking for the lowest prices, regardless of the “brand.” This kind of behavior requires care.

After all, adulterated fuel is very common. It is mixed with water, alcohol or solvent to increase product volume, compromising the product’s final quality.

In Brazil, investigate stations to ensure they are validated and certified by ANP (the National Agency of Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels). ANP authorization is required for a company to sell automotive fuel, and Consulta Posto Web lets you check registration details and the legal status of automotive fuel retailers. This is the best way to reduce the risk of refueling at an unauthorized location and protect the vehicle’s engine from mixed-in substances when refueling.

Driver training

The way drivers handle driving directly relates to fuel expenses. Poor habits such as unnecessary acceleration or hard braking lead to higher fuel consumption — as well as making vehicle damage more likely.

For this reason, investing in driver training from time to time is worthwhile, especially for specific situations that may arise on a trip, such as rain and storms. Drivers should be instructed in good practices.

For example, rapid acceleration, speeding and harsh braking waste fuel. On hot days, air conditioning can also reduce fuel economy, while open windows increase aerodynamic drag and make the vehicle use more energy to move. Small pieces of guidance like these help develop more economical driving.

Good driving practices also help avoid fines — important for reducing company expenses overall.

Route planning

Planning routes is good for controlling fuel consumption and providing faster deliveries. In other words, it is a crucial part of transport operations.

In many plans, managers forget to consider important details such as:

• the number of traffic lights along the way;
• cargo departure times;
• the possibility of congestion;
• urban roads;
• etc.

Nowadays, various apps (such as Google Maps and Waze) can help with this planning because they already consider those factors and, moreover, whether trucks can use certain roads. Especially in large cities, roads that prohibit large vehicles are common.

Organizing trips and combining journeys when possible also reduces time spent driving with a cold engine, another factor influencing fuel economy.

Avoiding overloading

There are two important things to keep in mind here:

being subject to a fine in Brazil and increasing fuel consumption.

Overloading increases vehicle effort and reduces fuel efficiency. As a general reference, an extra 100 pounds — about 45 kilograms — can reduce fuel economy by approximately 1%, although the actual impact varies by vehicle, load and operation. It may seem small, but it makes a considerable difference to total expenses.

With this information, what you need to do is clear. Loads must be kept within the maximum weight permitted for each vehicle’s size and capacity.

Overall, Prolog can help organize your operation better and ensure comprehensive maintenance through the Electronic Checklist.

Curious about this solution? Get in touch with us!