Your business vehicle fleet can probably be more fuel efficient and managed with fuel sustainability in mind.
The application of the following smart tips may vary from business to business and vehicle to vehicle, but this list is a menu of options that may be relevant to your business.
1. Your choice of vehicle size is the first point at which fuel economy can be influenced. If your work vehicles travel short distances, travel at or below the 50km speed limit and frequently stop and start, a smaller engined vehicle is more appropriate. Vehicles which transport goods as well as staff, drive on the open road and go long distances will be more efficient with a larger engine. Do a thorough analysis of the needs for your fleet before you buy.
2. There are fuel choices and renewable energy is now an option. As part of the selection process the environmental sustainability of your fleet may lead you to diesel vehicles allowing for biodiesel fuel. The bio part of your biodiesel emits lesser quantities of harmful gas. Your vehicle needs may allow for a hybrid vehicle that uses both an internal combusion engine as well as an electric power system.
3. Purchasing fuel using discounts for your volume and renewable energy. Any business will consider a volume discount for plant and vehicles, and for petrol or diesel, but it may be worth seeing if you can use your volume, along with other businesses to get cheaper biofuel.
4. The size and composition of your vehicle fleet is worth considering, if vehicles have a lot of downtime a smaller fleet may be better, or a larger multipurpose fleet to match usage with optimal fuel efficiency could be a more efficient choice.
5. Give your staff defensive driving refresher courses. As well as helping staff drive more safely, reducing excessive use of speed, acceleration and revving up the vehicles, will make for better fuel economy.
6. Keep log books of vehicle use. While this will help with tax and managing use of vehicles from non-work use, such logs will enable analysis of the timing of trips, the frequency of travel to and from destinations, and fuel use of individual staff. If a number of trips are taken at peak times it is possible these can be retimed, combined or spaced to avoid time spent in traffic.
7. If any staff do have higher fuel use than others it is worth investigating the reasons. It may be they are using larger engined vehicles, transporting heavy equipment, there are mechanical issues, or the staff are traveling in rush hour traffic. There are also other less acceptable reasons, such as overloading, speeding, acceleration or excursions. Whatever the reasons the causes of this higher usage of energy can be addressed.
8. Regular maintenance can ensure vehicles are running efficiently. Inefficient tuning, filters, braking systems can all use more energy.
9. Can your business be more efficiently organised with energy efficiency in mind? It is worth thinking if more of your work be done with fewer vehicle trips, with meetings conducted by phone or on line with fewer cross-town journeys. If staff are agreeable you may be able to locate vehicles with them after hours so they can start work immediately rather than driving to the office and heading out to work.
10. Your business may be doing too much of its own transport. It may be worth considering if you can contract out your goods delivery and transport to businesses with a fleet more suited to your haulage needs. Along the same lines it may be worth consider public transport and whether that could have a greater role in your business, the infrequent non-urgent trips to rare cross-town locations, or the shorter 'too far to walk' trips might be considerably cheaper by bus or taxi.
