Reduce idling to cut fleet fuel costs

By Mark Rose, managing director of Tracker UK

Managers who reduce idling with the help of telematics cut their fleet fuel costs while also reducing emissions – another increasingly critical goal.

A Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) study worked out that if in one day, 50% of all LGVs in London idled at a set of traffic lights for just one minute, nearly 3,000 kg (exact value 2,916 kg) of CO2 would be released. When combined with London’s car data, TRL found that it would take 66 UK native broadleaf trees 100 years to absorb the CO2 produced each minute.

How much fuel does a lorry burn idling?

TRL’s detailed study also found that HGVs consume up to 21.7g of diesel and emit 68.64g of CO2 whilst idling for one minute, costing 3p per minute in fuel.

The study revealed that if this HGV were to idle for 10 minutes each day of the academic year (190 days), that would cost more than £58 – and that’s back when diesel cost just 117.07 pence per litre.

For an entire fleet, the cost of fuel consumed while idling can easily add up to thousands of pounds. What’s more, the wear and tear caused by excessive idling leads to additional maintenance costs and premature vehicle replacement.

Idling data provided by a telematics-based fleet management system can help companies curb these expenses — and avoid idling fines.

Increasingly, many local authorities with anti-idling laws are imposing heavy penalties for vehicle idling. Long-haul, for-hire and local delivery fleet managers must know the applicable laws along each route and share that information with drivers to help ensure compliance.

Identify when and where your drivers are idling

To reduce idling, cut back on fuel waste and avoid costly penalties, you must know when and where your fleet vehicles are idling. 

Some idling is unavoidable. In hot or cold weather, drivers need to control the climate in the cab, even when they’re not driving. This might mean hours of idling while they sleep or pause at a rest stop to remain in compliance with hours-of-service requirements.

Drivers also need to idle at red lights, when stopped or slowed in traffic, to keep cargo at an appropriate temperature, to build up the air pressure needed for safe brake use or to operate an auxiliary appliance that runs on engine power.

But some drivers develop bad idling habits, and it’s those drivers who run up your fuel costs unnecessarily.

With a telematics-based fleet management system you can use idling reports to view idling data across your entire fleet and drill down into idling behaviour for each driver.

In the application, idling reports include not only the time and location of each idling event but also working idling time and wasted idling time. You can view a driver’s idle minutes per stop and total idle minutes per day.

Reports can be scheduled to run automatically at pre-set intervals and can also be generated manually as needed.

Use long idle alerts to tackle vehicle idling in real time

Sometimes it pays to catch the worst idling offenders in the act so you can step in and act before more fuel is wasted, and before someone reports the vehicle for an idling violation. Tracker’s fleet telematics offerings allow you to react to long idling in real time with the help of long idle alerts.

These alerts can be configured based on idling time parameters you define. You may choose to be alerted after 20 or 30 minutes of idling, for instance. You can even choose to limit idling alerts to specific drivers or specific vehicles.

The more you know about your drivers’ idling habits, the better you can identify drivers who need additional training around when and why to turn off their engine.

Calculate the cost of idling to your fleet

How much is idling hurting your organisation in terms of fleet fuel costs? If you don’t know, you can find out using telematics-based fleet management software. These allow you to enter your vehicle’s fuel cost per litre to create idling reports that show you both your working idling costs and your wasted idling costs.

They also reveal your carbon footprint as measured in metric tonnes of carbon emitted by your vehicles.

Fleet fuel costs are the number one budget item for many road haulage businesses, accounting for as much as 60% of operating expenses.

By reducing idling, you can make your fuel budget stretch further.

Idling data from a fleet management system can help you enforce your idling policy, identify drivers who violate it and reward drivers who set an example of behaviour that’s good for the company and the planet.