If your livelihood involves transportation, you cannot help but be concerned when the price of gasoline and diesel go up. Independent owner/operators as well as trucking companies know that their very survival depends on keeping their fuel expenditures down. While the price of oil, and consequentially the price of diesel is beyond the control of the average driver or company there are ways to lower fuel costs. Big trucking companies have the advantage over the smaller ones, and the independent drivers. Volume buying assures the best price, but although not everyone can receive the lowest price per gallon, everyone can cut fuel consumption.
TRACK MILEAGE
Nothing can be improved upon unless it can be quantified. It is imperative to keep accurate records of fuel mileage. By checking miles per gallon at each fill up, the driver knows when a change in his or her driving has affected the fuel consumption. Many products claim to improve fuel mileage by improving engine efficiency, reducing friction or increasing the truck’s aerodynamics. Even if a product can increase fuel mileage, without knowing the degree of increase it is impossible to know if the savings outweigh the cost of the product. Knowing the base-line mpg and tracking mileage will also allow you to evaluate changes in driving that can lower fuel costs.
PLAN AHEAD
Planning the best route, a route that avoids construction zones and rush hour traffic jams saves fuel by avoid excessive starting and stopping. Thanks to modern technology, choosing the most cost efficient route is much easier than before. GPS units come with software to help with route planning and smart phones have applications that allow the user to keep track of up to the minute traffic situations. Remember, the truck only makes money if it is moving; so if the truck cannot move its engine should not be running.
SLOW DOWN
If fuel prices were low, a case might be made for running fast even if it lowers your mpg. The money lost in gas efficiency could be recouped in the time savings. However, with fuel prices as high as they are going fast is damaging to the bottom line. Limiting speed to between 50 and 55 mph allows for fuel savings without sacrificing safety. For this reason, some company owned trucks are governed to keep the drivers from going over a set speed.
WATCH RPMS
In addition to speed, drivers need to consider their engine’s rpm. The higher the rpm, the higher the fuel consumption, so to use less fuel you need to keep the rpm low. This means running in top gear whenever possible; ideally, a truck should run in high gear 90 percent of the time for optimum fuel mileage. Generally, it saves fuel to start out slowly and build momentum. When starting out on the downward slope of a hill, however, the effects of inertia on the truck make skip shifting a viable option. Ideally, there should be no need for reviving the engine to move to the next gear or experiencing excessive rpm levels before moving into the next higher gear.
Many in the general population are unaware of how the fuel costs truckers incur ripple through the economy as a whole. Higher fuel prices mean higher costs for everything that travels by truck, which is practically all consumer goods. The increase in prices from high fuel costs hit truckers and their families as well. As independent drivers and small trucking firms are forced out of business competition and prices increase even more. Your best hope as a driver is to run your business as lean as possible to be competitive.
Robert Wilkes is an on the road freelance blogger for TheTruckersReport.com as well as a regular poster on TheTruckersReport.com Forum.
