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A fuel management system enables you to automatically track fuel assets from the time of purchase through dispensing. You gain better control over your inventory, avoid mistakes that result from human error and deter theft. But did you know your fuel management system can help ensure route compliance, too?
Every time your driver starts an engine, takes to the road or leaves their vehicle idling, you’re burning fuel. Expensive fuel. And you’re creating wear-and-tear on that engine. The ability to optimize route planning and ensure driver compliance gives you more ways to reduce fuel consumption and increase the lifespan of your fleet.
A fuel management system helps you track vehicle usage.
A system such as FuelMaster PROKEE® collects data every time a vehicle is fueled. The system is even more effective when each vehicle is outfitted with an Automotive Information Module (AIM2), an RFID-based transmitter-receiver.
With AIM2, your fuel management system can be entirely hands-free. That eliminates the possibility of drivers forgetting to record information, transposing numbers or making dispensing mistakes that can waste fuel and cause paperwork confusion.
Instead, your system automatically records and uploads data including vehicle identification, odometer and hours of service readings and alerts regarding engine error codes or next service. The system calculates vehicle efficiency as well as fuel consumption, giving you an immediate picture of mileage and usage patterns including driver-controlled actions such as PTO, idling and “out of route” travel.
These details can help dispatchers and managers identify route deviations. And that’s just the beginning.
Combining your fuel management system with an overall fleet management program takes route compliance to new heights.
With route planning software and an onboard or portable device with integrated GPS, you can finally, really, manage fuel consumption because you can optimize route planning in advance and also communicate changes to drivers on the fly. GPS enables time, date and location stamping that give you greater visibility into vehicle usage and driver actions. In fact, studies show GPS-based fleet tracking can increase productivity as much as 25%.
You can not only identify excess miles driven, you can see where and when that occurred, to understand whether the driver simply wasn’t following the prescribed route, was dodging traffic problems or was perhaps using the vehicle for personal reasons.
You can plot the most efficient route to fueling facilities as well as customer locations. That helps you save time and fuel.
Using your fuel management system to ensure the most efficient routing – and verify that drivers stick with the plan – helps improve vehicle productivity. Each shift’s workload can be accomplished with the fewest possible miles driven, and lower mileage means your fleet will last longer.
The same detailed, reliably accurate, complete and timely information that allows you to guarantee route compliance also enables you to stay on schedule with regular maintenance. And automatically-generated alerts to engine error codes enable you to catch and fix problems before they get out of hand, potentially causing a breakdown that could significantly throw off your route plan and damage customer relationships.
Ensuring route compliance bring additional benefits.
Optimizing routing also optimizes driver time, making personnel more productive. The ability to reduce delays due to traffic congestion can save fuel and enable drivers to complete their route more efficiently.
The route data you gather enables you to better manage driver schedules and ensure accurate time card details for payroll.
Route compliance isn’t just an internal expectation. It assures you’re meeting customer expectations for on-time delivery and accurate billing. Route planning efficiencies can even enable you to expand the number of deliveries per shift without adding drives or vehicles in service. You might choose to offer additional specialized services. Or spend more time building stronger relationships with customers.
Photo Credit: Cokestories