You probably hear this sentiment more and more these days: people are destroying and desecrating the earth, and unless we all do our part to stop and reverse the damage created, we are going to face permanent consequences to the environment. Many studies suggest that emissions from motor vehicles are causing the earth’s atmosphere to warm, resulting in negative effects on our climate. You know polluting the planet is a problem. You know you want to help. Here’s the problem: how do you “do your part” for our environment when your entire business consists of managing fleets of vehicles? Especially vehicles that are less-than-ideal in fuel consumption and carbon emissions.
Every fleet operator wants to make their operation more eco-friendly, but balancing the impact on the environment with your bottom-line can be a challenging order to fill. The ever-increasing demand for business, especially with COVID-19 restrictions on commerce creating a year-round “peak season” for fleets, is stretching supply chains to their limits to meet shipping deadlines.
The shift to “go green” can seem like a daunting decision. Improving the environmental impact of every vehicle in your fleet is not as easy as turning off the lights at the end of the day. It’s a more involved and mindful task to take on. Making your fleet “greener” may seem like a pain, but operating a more environmentally-friendly fleet may not be as hard or as expensive as you think.
How do I create a more eco-friendly fleet?
You can use simple methods to help your fleet go green without spending a lot. By re-evaluating delivery goals, lightening vehicle loads, upgrading route optimisation software, and monitoring fuel costs, you can lower your overall carbon footprint. Not only can you implement green techniques and help the environment, but you can also improve your fleet’s efficiency and still make a profit.
Tip 1 : Lighter Loads = Lighter Costs
This first tip may seem simple; because it is. Reducing the weight of the cargo load can dramatically improve the fuel economy of the vehicles in your fleet. A Canadian report found that a delivery vehicle reducing its weight by only 100 pounds would save nearly $600 in fuel across 124k miles.
Furthermore, an article by Autozone found that reducing 200 pounds of unnecessary weight would add up to one mile per gallon back onto your gas mileage. Better fuel economy means that there will be a decrease in the amount of pollution emitted into the atmosphere.
Lessening the load on your fleet is beneficial for many other reasons. The heavier the load carried, the heavier the stress placed on your vehicle’s engine. This will increase the wear and tear and shorten the lifespan of your trucks. Not only will you need to make repairs more often, but worn parts could lead to less efficient fuel consumption with every shift. When you reduce the weight of the vehicle, engines will last longer, and fuel economy will remain optimal.
Did you know that safety is an enhanced benefit when operating lighter vehicles? Delivering smaller loads lowers the risk of a rollover. A lighter weight would also improve a driver’s ability to stop quickly to avoid collisions. When you combine improved fuel consumption with lighter vehicles’ safety features, you’ll find that lightening the load is good for the planet and the person behind the wheel.
Tip 2: Re-Evaluate Your Driver’s Habits
Setting daily goals for drivers to meet is one of the biggest challenges facing delivery companies wanting to be more eco-friendly. Due to the current gold rush in the shipping and delivery industry, carriers are imposing strict delivery times and order delivery quotas. To meet these intense demands, drivers may develop bad habits in their efficiency. The result of these bad habits may, unfortunately, be a larger carbon footprint.
Drivers may speed to reach destinations faster, using more fuel than usually needed to complete the route. When the driver reaches a drop-off destination, they may leave the vehicle idling while rushing a package to the recipient’s doorstep. While this seems efficient, compared to shutting off and restarting the engine, idling for more than ten seconds consumes more fuel than an engine restart.
To meet delivery quotas, drivers may prioritise destinations with larger package volumes and ignore optimised routes that schedule smaller drop-offs first. This could lead to more fuel consumption and more wear and tear on vehicles. All of these situations can cause your fleet to pollute more than necessary, as well as cost your company precious time and money spent on fuel.
You may be asking yourself, “What can I do about this?” You need packages to ship on time and have deadlines to meet. But to run a greener fleet, a small reduction in productivity may be required initially to create more environmentally sustainable practices with your company.
You may then ask, “What does this mean for profits?” This change does not automatically translate to a loss in revenue. The adjustment may lead actually to greater net profits from streamlined efficiency. For example, relaxing the delivery quotas may cause drivers to follow their optimised delivery routes more carefully. Therefore, they save time and fuel necessary to complete the shift. The increased efficiency may reduce costs while improving profit margins even as driver productivity decreases slightly.
Sometimes drivers have to cover multiple city regions, which means more time spent on the road, and more fuel is consumed and exhausted. A cost-beneficial technique to implement may be a reduction of the geographic region each driver in your fleet covers. Rather than schedule all drivers to all regions, try scheduling drivers based on volume needs.
For example, a specific part of town may host many residential apartments. This area holds a steady demand for deliveries. Instead of scheduling multiple drivers to make numerous stops in the same area, dedicate one designated driver to cover the region on their own. With all the deliveries going to the place, the assigned driver would be more likely to leave the vehicle fully parked while making deliveries on foot. This cuts down time spent in transit as well as fuel consumption and emissions.
Tip 3: Fuel Consumption Monitoring
Making your fleet greener means having mindful fuel consumption. Excessive fuel consumption is bad for the climate, and it is bad for business. Understanding your fleet’s consumption daily, weekly, and monthly allows you to make decisions that can reduce your business’s costs and help the environment.
Small business fuel cards are the most effective methods to monitor fuel costs. By equipping every driver with a fuel card, driver-side fuel reimbursements are eliminated. All fuel expenses are also captured in uniformed invoices that can be analysed by your logistics staff.
Because fuel cards gather all expenses to one account, you can dig deeper into the numbers and see how much fuel your drivers are purchasing during shifts. Instituting a fuel management program will also give you greater control over what your drivers purchase in the future. For example, a fuel card can limit the type of fuel purchased, restricting the driver to only using regular unleaded gasoline instead of super-unleaded or premium-grade gasoline.
Another benefit to fuel cards is the insight provided to fleet managers. The expense reports show managers which drivers are consuming the most fuel. With this data in hand, a manager may be able to address bad habits of individual drivers. It may also show managers where route scheduling could improve. Having fuel card data can produce an invaluable reference point for improving your fleet’s fuel efficiency, thus increasing green efforts.
Tip 4: Upgrade Your Route Optimisation
Route optimisation software plays a crucial role in the operation of a delivery fleet. Every major carrier in the world uses some sort of delivery route planner to improve delivery times, but the technology can also improve your carbon footprint with minimal effort.
Route optimisation software plans the most efficient routes by organising all scheduled stops into the shortest trip possible. These apps use advanced algorithms that analyse real-time GPS systems to calculate drivers’ routes based on traffic reports, road closures, weather conditions, and noted detours.
Here are some features you should look for when selecting a route optimisation software for your fleet drivers:
- Convenience in mapping: mapping your driver’s delivery route should be painless. Many of the best route planners make the process as easy as snapping a picture of your delivery addresses. Then, the app does the rest of the work planning the route for you.
- Large volume: being able to map a delivery route containing all scheduled stops in one trip is vital to your business’s success. Quality route optimisation apps can organise over two hundred stops in a single delivery route.
- Navigation: most great delivery route planners have turn-by-turn navigation built right into their interface. This is not only convenient for drivers, but it keeps their attention on the road, and not fiddling with different apps and screens for route information.
Without changing anything else in your business, simply upgrading to the best route optimisation app for your drivers can reduce operating costs. A top-rated route planning app can save each individual driver at least one hour from their shift. One hour saved on a route could mean more stops made per shift, less idling in traffic, less overtime pay for drivers, and serving more customers without the overhead costs of hiring new employees. The time saved would also cut an extra hour of carbon emissions per vehicle. Taking advantage of this technology is essential to running a more eco-friendly fleet.
Final Thought: Going Green is a Process
Shifting a fleet of heavy-duty, gas-guzzling delivery vehicles into being more efficient and eco-friendly can be difficult, but it is not impossible. You don’t need to buy entirely new equipment or modify every one of your fleet vehicles. You also don’t have to replace your existing fleet with zero-emission trucks and vans to make the world a better place. By applying simple, cost-effective solutions, any fleet manager can make their business more eco-friendly starting today
