Category: Green Fleet

Reduce Fleet Emissions With These Easy Tips

Posted on | by Courtney redwell

Reducing fleet emissions can be seen as a difficult task as producing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions when running a fleet is inevitable. Reducing your fleet emissions will not only help the environment it will save your company money on gas, and who doesn’t want that?

The concept of reducing your fleet emissions is quite simple: the greater your fuel consumption, the greater your emissions will be. Reducing your fuel consumption will, in turn, reduce your fleet’s emissions and save you money.

The way employees drive company vehicles will either increase or decrease fuel economy and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Fleets that are serious about becoming more sustainable must strive to modify their driver’s on-road behaviour to reduce fleet emissions.

GoFleet wants to work with you to lower your GHG emissions and save you money. Our intelligent GPS fleet tracking system makes reducing fleet emissions easy.

Here are easy tips to lowering emissions:

  1. Avoid aggressive driving (eg. speeding, accelerating too quickly, harsh cornering, hard braking)
  2. Avoid idling: Reduce fleet emissions/gas consumption easily, do not leave your vehicle running
  3. Reduce additional mileage: Optimize your routes and minimize your number of stops
  4. Drive according to the speed limit

Communicating these tips to your drivers and having them implemented are two totally different things. Yes it is one thing to tell them to make these changes but how will you know they are in fact changing their habits? Our GPS fleet tracking system will not only help monitor but also help implement and point out the negative driving habits of your drivers.

  • Reduce Aggressive Driving Habits
    Aggressive driving like speeding, aggressive acceleration, hard braking and harsh cornering can all be monitored in our GPS fleet tracking system. It will show all of the listed infractions on the map exactly where it happened. We also have Driver Scorecard Reports where it will list the number of incidents each driver has had over the last week in comparison with all other drivers.
  • Eliminate Speeding and Idling
    Speeding and idling are two of the largest contributors to higher fuel consumption. We offer something called “Audible Driver Alerts” that will alert your drivers of these infractions immediately when it happens. If your drivers are speeding or idling our device will detect it and start beeping, it will continue to beep until the infraction is fixed (speeding/idling is stopped). This feature also works for monitoring seat belt use.
  • Optimize Routes
    Our software has a route planning tool that allows you to optimize your routes to save time and save on gas. Reduce fleet emissions by driving shorter distances to destinations.
  • Drive The Speed Limit
    Since our software is so advanced it displays the posted road speed in comparison with your driver’s speed on the map. This is another way to ensure your drivers are not speeding, not wasting gas, and possibly the most important element, make sure they are obeying traffic laws.

Through effective implementation, you will be more likely to not only improve your fuel economy but also decrease GHG emissions and boost on-road safety. Reducing your fleet’s emissions will not only benefit you (and save you money) but it will also benefit the environment. Transportation is one of the largest, if not the largest, source of air pollution.

Contact GoFleet to find out how our GPS fleet tracking systems can help you move towards running a greener fleet and significantly reduce fleet emissions.

reduce-fleet-emissions-with-fleet-management-solutions

Canadian Environment Week: Clean Air Day June 4th

Posted on | by Courtney redwell

The first week of June is Canadian Environment Week, June 1st to June 7th. Protecting Canada’s environment offers a world of benefits for Canadians, from enhancing health and the quality of life to strengthening the economy. Canadian Environment Week is a great opportunity to celebrate our achievements and work towards reducing air pollution even further.

Clean Air Day, celebrated on June 4th this year, raises awareness and encourages action on clean air issues. It is a celebration of environmentally friendly activities that promote clean air across the country.

The transportation industry is one of the largest contributors of air pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions. For Clean Air Day why not begin or renew a commitment to greener transportation? In making the commitment to greener transportation not only will you be helping the environment but you will also be saving money on fuel.

lower-emissions-with-fleet-management-solutions

It would be great if we could all transfer over to electric vehicles or hybrids overnight but we realize it is not that simple. New vehicles can be very expensive and may not even be properly suited for the job. Our fleet management solutions help monitor the amount of gas your current vehicles are using on a regular basis and find the areas where you are using unnecessary amounts of fuel. We want to work with you lower your emissions and fuel costs.

Fuel is often the highest operating cost for some fleets; a measurable method that leads to fast fuel savings is our fleet management system. It helps reduce fuel consumption by:

  • Reducing idling time, hard acceleration, harsh braking and speeding
  • Reducing total miles driven by incorporating route optimization
  • Detecting engine faults that may be contributing to increased fuel consumption
  • Analyze your miles per gallon (MPG) reports to pinpoint your most fuel efficient vehicles

Our fleet management system offers the most extensive metrics available to help you effectively run a greener fleet and save on fuel. GoFleet can help you manage the driver behaviour that leads to high fuel consumption. You can view information directly in My.Geotab (our fleet management software) and monitor any drivers spending too much time idling using our idling report, see below:

idling-time-report

You can also monitor their hard acceleration, harsh braking, speeding, and idling (all factors in fuel consumption) in one easy to view report, our Driver Score Card Report:

driver-score-card-report

Many of our customers like to print off the Driver Score Card Report and post it in the lunchroom or somewhere all employees can see it. It then often becomes a competition between employees to see who can get the lowest number of incidents, and sometimes the winner at the end of a certain time period will win a prize. This keeps it fun and helps encourage your drivers to reduce fuel consumption without having to tell them off directly.

Dispatch drivers more effectively to reduce fuel consumption, CO2 emissions, mileage, and increase the operational efficiency of your entire business. Get to your customers faster and more efficiently while lowering your fuel consumption with our Route Planning Tool:

route-optimization-lower-emissions

Implementing a Green Fleet Program targeting improvement of fuel economy with the use of innovative fleet management software allows business owners and fleet managers not only to help the environment but also reduce fuel expenses.

Want to learn more about GPS fleet tracking and the environmentally friendly benefits? Contact one of our fleet management consultants today for more information and start lowering your emissions and saving on fuel!

Fleet Tracking System: Easy Steps To Trim Fuel Costs

Posted on | by Courtney redwell

FLEET TRACKING SYSTEM HELPS CUT FUEL COSTS

Trimming the fat off fuel costs doesn’t have to be difficult. It starts with implementing a fleet tracking system, then developing and managing fuel efficiency key performance indicators (KPIs). These KPIs include:

Idling Cost & Idling Percentage = KPI for Fuel Use Efficiency

Why:

Our fleet tracking system shows an idling percentage which represents the overall idling time over total driving time. A high idling percentage leads to poor fuel efficiency and significantly higher overall fuel costs. The lower your idling percentage, the higher the fuel savings.

fleet tracking system cuts idling

Action Steps:

  1. Establish an initial baseline of idling cost and percentage by driver.
  2. Target weekly measurable improvements in idling percentage and idling cost.
  3. Progressively reduce the idling time for the Audible Driver Coaching Beep (from 10 minutes, to 5 minutes, to 3 minutes).
  4. Feel free to move to a monthly reporting/review format as you see measurable improvements with idling habits.
  5. Share weekly results and reports with drivers and setup quarterly/annual rewards for lowest idling time.

Total Incidents by Driver = KPI for Fuel Efficiency against Aggressive Driving Habits

Why:

Driving habits such as speeding, harsh braking and rapid acceleration have a significant impact on fuel economy. GPS fleet tracking systems can help catch these bad driving habits and correct them.

Action Steps:

  1. Establish an initial baseline of aggressive driving habits by drivers.
  2. Educate company drivers on other fuel efficient driving habits – such as optimal engine speeds, driving speeds, warm up times, acceleration and deceleration techniques.
  3. Target weekly measurable improvements in the Driver Scorecard Report.
  4. Feel free to move to a monthly reporting/review format as you see measurable improvements with driving habits.
  5. Share weekly results and reports with drivers and setup quarterly/annual rewards for safe and efficient driving.

Implement a Fuel Card System and Fuel Card Integration

Fuel cards can also be used to detect fraud, and monitor expenditure (fuel/distance) and identify those drivers/vehicles who appear to be using more fuel than would be expected.

The administrative burdens of managing a fuel card program can be significantly reduced by integrating a new/existing fuel card program with GoFleet’s fuel card integration system. GoFleet’s GPS fleet tracking system fuel integration monitors and measures actual fuel consumption and fuel ups from the vehicle computer, and against GPS data.

Action Steps:

Request a custom fuel-up report from GoFleet, which measures the date, odometer and fuel up amount. (You will be required to input the actual fuel tank capacities for each vehicle to get the most accurate measurements).

fleet tracking system fuel card integration

ENHANCED FUEL CARD ADD-ON: Request fuel card integration with an existing Fuel Card. Comparing actual fuel data with fuel card reports allow a fleet manager to easily identify inconsistencies and potential fuel theft.

To learn more about how GoFleet’s fleet tracking system can help lower the fuel costs of your fleet, contact us!

Fleet management: Fuel Usage, Faults, Diagnostics, Maintenance Reminders