Fuel Optimization To Go
Each truck could save $900 a year on fuel.
JOHN BENDEL
TECHNOLOGY EDITOR
Small fleets and owner operators have a new resource for on-the-road fuel savings. Integrated Decision Support Corp. (IDSC) of Richardson, Texas, has launched a web-based fuel optimization routing service called Fuel Advice. The service was officially announced in June.
Small fleets and individual drivers access the Fuel Advice software over the Internet with a desktop, laptop or truckstop kiosk computer. The price of individual routes varies according to fleet size and the complexity of a given optimization — the number of stop-offs, for example — but optimized routes generally range between $1.00 and $1.50, according to David Harris, IDSC's sales director.
Like some other web-based routing services, Fuel Advice sells optimized routes in pre-paid blocks. A driver or company can sign up with a credit card.
"He purchases a block of transactions. Once those transactions are expired he has a choice of continuing or he can stop. It's not a long-term commitment," Harris said.
While he would not reveal a bottom-line, one-truck minimum block price, Harris said Fuel Advice can result in savings of between 4 and 10 cents per gallon over non-optimized routes.
Weighing Choices
Fuel optimization routing generally applies to truckload and long-haul markets because it takes advantage of price differences among fuel outlets, often truckstops.
Optimization weighs a number of parameters that include the fuel capacity of a particular truck, fuel levels at the time of dispatch, rate of consumption, and fuel prices at specific locations between stops.A Fuel Advice user logs onto the Internet, goes to the Fuel Advice web site, fills in identification information, then enters the starting point for the trip, the ending point and whatever stops might be in between. The program prompts for other information, such as fuel capacity, fuel level and consumption rate.
First Fuel Advice will generate a route, then weigh the various factors to come up with an optimum plan for fueling along the way. The resulting trip plan will offer highway-by-highway directions and specific fuel buying instructions, including the number of gallons to buy at each stop place.
According to Harris, Fuel Advice is based on Expert Fuel, another IDSC program. ExpertFuel was the first fuel optimization program of its kind when it was introduced in 1994.
Before that, fuel optimization and routing were not generally related in most trucking operations. Aside from the occasional savvy driver or small fleet operation, getting the most from fuel dollars was a matter for diesel engineers and the business people who negotiated fuel buying contracts.
"I think what we've found over the years is that motor carriers already have a fuel network. They're already asking the drivers to stay within a particular network. They already measure compliance within that network. The addition of an automated fuel optimization system is telling them the appropriate level of gallons to put on at each of the stops," Harris said.
Some big fleets were already using databases of day-by-day fuel oil prices to exploit price differences from one outlet to another, particularly along established routes. ExpertFuel automated the process and made it possible to generate fuel-optimized routes virtually anywhere and very quickly.
First, of course, the company took its product to big truckload fleets, some of which are still among its customers. They are the high-profile commercial fleets such as Schneider National, U.S. Xpress and Interstate Distributors.
ExpertFuel is a licensed software product that runs on the carrier's own computer system, frequently on an IBM AS/400. The program integrates with major truckload enterprise software from Tom McLeod Software, TMW Systems, Innovative Computing Company and Maddocks Systems. Integration provides opportunities.
For example, when a driver is dispatched over, say, Qualcomm's OmniTRACS, ExpertFuel automatically generates a route optimization. The driver can refer to the detailed instructions on the truck's onboard display for the duration of the run. ExpertFuel monitors driver compliance with those instructions.
IDSC brought together a number of technologies in ExpertFuel. The underlying mapping engine comes from ESRI. Actual highway routing is laid out using either ProMiles or Rand McNally software, whichever the customer chooses. Customers can also select their choice of daily fuel price data supplier, Either OPIS — which stands for Oil Petroleum Information Services — or T-Chek Systems.
(T-Chek once offered a web-based fuel optimization program of its own, but now prefers to supply the price data to software providers, according to T-Chek spokesman Mark Derks.)
Bottom Line Impact
While ExpertFuel is not a web-based program, it does require connectivity to download fresh fuel price data. That can be over a dial-up connection, but most customers use the Internet these days, according to Harris.
"So you have ExpertFuel for the integrated process with the dispatch system and now Fuel Advice for the smaller fleet," said Harris.
As you might expect, Fuel Advice can't do all that ExpertFuel can. For instance, the web-based product cannot track driver compliance. That's up to the small-fleet user.
Options are limited as well. For example, Fuel Advice customers do not get to choose between ProMiles and Rand McNally for basic highway routing. Fuel Advice uses the Rand McNally routing engine, period.
However, Fuel Advice may soon interface with enterprise software much like ExpertFuel does. In such instances, management rather than the drivers would access the service enabling small-fleet dispatchers to run optimizations prior to dispatch.
"There are a lot of carriers that have 75 or less trucks and have these dispatch systems. So we're going to make it (Fuel Advice) available to them so it looks like it's totally integrated, but they'll only pay on a transaction basis," said Harris.
According to Harris the return on investment for, say, a $100 worth of optimized routings would be rapid to say the least.
"We would expect that each truck should generate anywhere between $800 to $1,000 a year in fuel savings," he said.
