Delivery fleet better mpg
 

My wife was telling her boss about me playing arround with my car trying to get better mpg. She was joking about it but sounds like he took it to heart. Now he wants me to help him with his fleet. He has 21 delivery trucks approx. 1 million miles per year. Don't have exact list of makes yet. I know there is some sprinters, ford and chevy vans, nissan box vans and some box trucks. I believe the box trucks have cummins in them. It is a FedEx ground/home delivery fleet so any thing that he does will have to be user friendly. I have not talked to him yet but am going to suggest him making drivers check tires(max air) every morning and keeping big clumps of mud off trucks as much as possible just to get things started.
I would love to hear y'all's ideas. Thanks

Tell him to put a scangauge in every vehicle and reward the driver with the best mpg.

Every mile counts when you're averaging 10 mpg, so I'd say that the first mod should be made in the office, tweaking the routes.
The delivery routes probably aren't going to be optimal, so tweaking them daily to cut the drive time down will bring an immediate gain. There is always room for improvement in a route, and with the holiday season here that will reap a great benefit when they need it most.

With 21 trucks, a 10% overall increase in efficiency of the routes would immediately be the equivalent of having one of the drivers working for free every day.

Get some more air in those tires, remove some mudflaps, and instruct the drivers how to drive more economical!

As much as they are bad for aero, I think the mudflaps are there to protect the company from being sued from incidents of flying rocks and such.

Yeah, it depends on how much of the route is urban; if average speed is low then it's a non-issue.

I thought FedEx (and other delivery companies) had already done that? Look for "route optimization software".

Except in many states where tire coverage laws apply.

I'm sure they do but not so sure the sub contractors would

There is always room for improvement in any program anyway, and when millions of miles pile up it makes a difference

Thanks for input guys. Dirty fave that is good idea about rewarding driver. Have to study on how to do so with the different trucks and routes. Have to check on the mud flaps. There is some highway miles from terminal to route and back. Wife has drove 340 in one day. Routes are made up in office but doesn't make any sense at times. Only the new drivers use them though. After they learn route it's done to get done as early as possible which go in hand with fewer miles. Thanks a lot for the input and keep it coming.

Diesel programmers can boost mileage.

Speed has bugger all to do with it. My brand new Wrangler's screen was chipped in a 25mph zone, by a Landrover with a missing mud flap. I was following at least 100 yards back.

Air pressure might not be worth daily, for the time of each driver each day- instead of weekly.

ROI calculations will be of chief importance since this is a business. Air pressure and simple aero mods from inexpensive materials are probably the best bet.

I was going to suggest a reward system too, but it will be tricky to sort out. With so many different types of vehicles, it is not a level playing field.

Hold a driver training class. Most hypermiling techniques would be off the table, but things like using the brakes less, accelerating slower (every FedEx driver I've seen is either at WOT or stomping on the brakes), and keeping the speed down should be acceptable. Maybe run gauges (ultragauges are cheaper so ROI should be quicker) in their trucks for a week without anyone knowing why, hold a class and inform the drivers of the push to improve efficiency, and then reward the driver that has the highest percentage increase over their baseline.

I think most aero mods would be a hard sell on a corporate vehicle.

It may make sense for the owner to sell some of the less efficient vehicles and buy more of the more efficient vehicles. Maybe even buy some smaller vehicles. A light delivery day might be handled by a Ford Transit Connect or similar.

Then maybe it would be worthwhile to look at route optimization software, because the specific route should change every day, depending on exactly where packages are to be delivered. For instance, there's no point in driving down my dead-end road unless there's a package for one of the half-dozen houses on it. A really good program would take into account how traffic &c varies by time of day, and so on.

My guess is that you ought to be able to find something that runs on a tablet, with GPS mapping &c.

If you reward the highest increase over the driver's individual baseline, you're basically penalising drivers who were doing the right thing all along. I say this because I used to hypermile a van I didn't own or pay the fuel on.

UG's are too easy to cheat. Just EOC and they take so long to reboot that they miss the 'pulse' entirely. Easy to get great numbers this way.

The reward system is a good idea overall, but I can't think of a way to police it that would be practical. Even if it tallied up fuel receipts, if the reward was too large they could just top up the tanks with their own cash or short fill.

There are GPS monitors available to track drivers but that opens up a whole stack of other issues.

Set an overall fleet savings goal and everyone wins if it is met

If you do a calculation on gallons of fuel used per year, those Sprinters will likely do pretty well since they often spend a month at a time in the garage...lol.

As for increasing the MPG of fleet vehicles, that's a tough one...they have a hard life (much like rental cars;).

Are the employees allowed any personal usage of the company vehicles? If so, that's a place to start.

Rem

The Boss will just have to appeal to their moral compass'.

BWWAHAHAHAHA.

Calculate the fuel cost annually, based on current gas prices. If the delivery drivers can reduce that consumption, based on the same cost and miles travelled, then split the savings, half as a bonus to the drivers and the other half as increased income for the owner.

Advise the drivers to read the hypermiling tips here. They (the drivers) should see the economic benefit for simply adjusting the "nut behind the wheel". If they could decrease their total consumption by even 10% then your are talking about 100k miles of free "fuel" per year. That would have to be in the tens of thousands of dollars, which would make a very nice Christmas bonus.

Give them all a tire gauge, or have a person dedicated to checking pressure. That could be logged to preempt a roads side breakdown due to a nail in the tire.

regards
mech

I would start by buying and installing Torque and a Bluetooth dongle. Put it under the dash. It will log everything basically a little blackbox for $40 or less.
Pull up to home base grab the wifi and it automatically will upload.
Complete with google earth data.

Find out who the worst drivers are. Who wastes the most fuel. It doesn't matter if joe drives the 4cyl ranger and bob drives a F350
Who is a better driver?

Find the worst drivers and tell them to shape up. Tell everyone else to keep up the good work and we will have a small bonus if numbers can improve. Explain that the money they will be saving by driving smarter will be put back into the payroll.

Keep good records and monthly calculate fuel mileage by truck, by driver, and by route. If one or a few drivers clearly are better, give them an appropriate bonus check at the end of the year.

All drivers take an update class on driving skills. The Smith System sounds good. All of the principles of safely driving a heavy vehicle will improve fuel mileage. Follow that class with tips on driving for mileage. DWL improves mileage without affecting trip time.

Increased coasting (DWB) before speed limit changes and stop signs does affect trip time. So does driving at slower speeds. Run some tests to find the actual effect on trip time and fuel mileage before pushing these.

If the second year shows an improvement in fleet fuel consumption, everybody gets a bonus. One or two standout drivers may get a larger bonus.

Thinking back, his post could be taken two ways. I took it like you, he's saying mud flaps aren't needed if speeds are low. But now I am thinking he meant mud flaps aren't hurting mileage if speeds are low.

This. I was wondering what you guys were going on about.

I'd stay away from this.

As a paid driver, my incentives are almost entirely centered around time. Fuel, brakes, tires and all other usage related expenses are the company's problem while the company and the customers make time my problem. It's going to be really hard to tell a fleet of drivers to focus on longer term corporate savings while their jobs are structured to reward non-eco driving. Even a monthly bonus for a year over year reduction in fuel usage is going to be hard to sell. Is it going to be based on miles traveled? Stops made? We all know what kind of variables hurt fuel usage, and a 21 truck fleet is going to guarantee some of the drivers are idling in traffic jams or simply not eco driving. We also know that every little bit helps and savings add up, but for this program we need to change the incentives for the individual drivers.

How do you increase efficiency in a delivery fleet?
First I'd focus on routing. This isn't just nitpicking over more right turns, but overall loading and dispatching. Who cares what mpg your fleet gets if you're setting it up for failure in the office?

Second is the trucks. Not tire pressures and aero mods, but overall maintenance, and over time, vehicle selection. Lots of delivery trucks out there look rather over-specced. Just because a cargo volume of X could have a weight of Y doesn't mean that's what you're actually hauling. I know it's easier to manage a fleet if all the trucks are interchangeable and capable of everything, but that adds up to tons of steel being bought and then hauled around town every day for no reason. It needs to be looked at. Modding the trucks is going to be a minor improvement at best and a financial and legal disaster at worst. A homemade side skirt flying off is going to be a mess with lawyers and insurance companies and a grille block is going to get blamed for the overheated engine even though nobody noticed that the thermostat was sticking.

The third place is the drivers. Most companies look at employees as opponents, things that cost a lot of money that need work to be wrung out of them. You need to make them your partners here, and this includes the office staff as well. Don't invent an incentive program, talk to the people and get ideas from them. They're where your biggest savings are going to come from, but you can't ask them to save you money when your other operations aren't set up to help them- and you can't add "save me gas" to their workload without changing their focus (pay).

The first thing I learned here at Ecomodder is that the most important part to modify for efficiency is the nut behind the wheel. Efficiency isn't a bolt-on product, and simply wanting your fleet of trucks to burn less gas isn't going to make your operations more efficient. Treating this as a hardware issue and not a management issue is a sign of bad management. It's nice that your wife's boss is interested in efficiency, but you can't help him much.

Like to say again thanks to you all for ideas and comments. I do agree with Charlie that anything done would have to be well thought out to save long term cost and/or lawsuits. And there may not be very much that can be done mechanical.
Employer/employee relationship is important in whether job is done efficiently or not. My boss was taught in college that praise of employee gets more out of him than more money. We have been arguing about it for 20years. So I made sure to care and work hard enough that he does both. Making a man do his part to secure his future is not an issue I care to tackle. Employer or employee

Thanks again

Efficient driving style not only saves fuel, but on maintenance costs too. Less brake wear, powertrain wear etc.

Is there wide selection of tyres available for his fleet? Model with low rr and high durability should be found.

I have to agree here.

As I read the suggestions for driving for economy on this site I find that my personal driving habits already include many of the techniques recommended here. My personal rig is a 1 ton diesel pickup and has 139k miles on it. I am still running the factory original clutch and rear brakes. I did put front brake pads on at 110k miles. My mechanic goes on about the miles I get out of tires, brakes, clutch etc. I run a mix of loads from 1000lbs in the bed to pulling trailers that range from 7k to 16k lbs. My truck works for its keep and gentle driving habits really do pay off in not only fuel but also maintenance costs.

How to balance the time vs economy battle is a tough one though...

Just my $.02

On an urban route the time savings of driving faster are mostly psychological :turtle:

I'm sure we can all recount any number of times where we've been overtaken by someone in a mad rush only to sail right back past them at the next light/ intersection etc.