Improving Your Fleets Sustainability
Sustainability is a crucial issue that needs to be addressed at every level of business to be effective, including transportation. An increasing number of countries are joining the same path as the UK and investing in greener economies. In support of these green initiatives, many new working techniques have been developed to reduce the impact of a vehicle on the environment without sacrificing productivity.
Can Sustainable Fleets Exist?
The short answer is yes. On the surface, fleet sustainability sounds like a difficult challenge, but it can be easily achieved. Like any commercial or industrial sector, sustainability can be reached within a vehicle fleet. Three levels of daily operations can be improved to meet this target: fuel, drivers, and metrics.
Sustainable Fuel
What your fleet runs on will significantly affect the sustainability of your fleet. Fortunately, AdBlue is a new additive that can be used with diesel fuel. AdBlue is a cost-effective addition that is a legal requirement for heavy goods vehicles as it reduces their fuel emissions by a startling amount.
This precise mixture of urea and deionised water is injected into the SCR (selective catalyst reduction) to break down mono-nitrogen oxides expelled from the engine’s exhaust. As a result, the ordinarily harmful emissions are now broken down into harmless water and nitrogen vapour.
This can be supported even further with on-site fuel storage, creating a reliable source of both your diesel fuel and the emissions-reducing additive.
Driver Performance
The way your drivers conduct their tasks will have a significant impact on the environment. Inefficient driving, idling, and delayed arrival times will contribute to increased emissions and a greater impact on the environment that is needed.
For example, improvising delivery routes can lead to making mistakes and having to double back on yourself or even getting lost entirely. Aggressive driving will also force the vehicle’s engine to burn more fuel than is necessary.
Encouraging improved driver performance is a positive goal to improve fleet operations, but it will also limit your environmental impact further.
Tracking Metrics
Beyond the fuel and its use, many areas of your business will affect your company’s environmental impact. Many seemingly minor factors may seem inconsequential alone. Still, when issues such as the condition of your trucks’ engines are allowed to build, they become very impactful and a harmful problem to your company’s sustainability and efficiency.
Investing in a fuel management system and an asset monitoring program is two methods of easily tracking how your resources are being used. This data on your company’s average performance enables fleet managers to analyse what is happening and make informed decisions accordingly. Vital elements can be addressed this way, including improving the sustainability of your operations.
Many elements of these three levels will be unique to your specific business work. Still, every fleet can benefit from reviewing these and begin working toward more sustainable position.
Why Is Fleet Sustainability Important?
The main reason sustainability is essential has already been stated, the continued protection of our environment for future generations. Another reason promoting a sustainable fleet benefits fleet managers is increased performance.
Creating a green fleet and maintaining an efficient one, have overlapping areas where both can be supported. For example, reducing your fleet size is an effective method for reducing costs. This eliminates the expenses of vehicle maintenance needs and encourages either vehicle sharing or more efficiently loaded goods to save fuel. This also lowers the environmental impact of your fleet’s work as fewer vehicles are in operation.
Sustainable fleets have provided benefits in addition to their significantly reduced environmental effects. However, a sustainable fleet requires increasing fuel efficiency and management, leading to increased work with reduced time and fuel. Consequently, this has made increasing sustainability a priority target for fleet managers, as maintaining this goal will improve all levels of their fleet operations.
How Can Fleet Sustainability Be Monitored?
Thanks to improved technology, tracking your fleet’s actions is now very straightforward. In addition, online systems can be customised to track and present this vital data for fleet managers from any location.
For example, managers can monitor vehicle telematics through GPS tracking to check driver performance and reward efficient driving. Even long-term monitoring can be checked, such as when the subsequent preventative maintenance checks should be made on your vehicles to keep them in the most efficient running order.
Many more minor improvements can be made thanks to monitoring previously mentioned elements such as driver performance and asset status. Still, wireless fuel monitoring is the most positively impactful.
Online fuel management is the most successful investment most fleet managers make for their businesses and is a perfect example of both sustainability and productivity crossing over. By managing your fuel, you can ensure your purchased asset is being used as effectively as possible and create more accurate predictions about how much you should purchase.
At Fueltek, our online fuel systems are connected to on-site diesel fuel pumps so that they can relay every action to your wireless device. These can consist of alerting you to any fuel withdrawing from your on-site tanks, who authorised it and how much is left in your tank. This example shows how you can easily improve your fleet sustainability. It helps managers closely analyse their fuel usage to ensure they always have enough whilst not creating excessive, wasteful emissions.
