Tapping Technology To Manage Fuel
John Bendel
Technology Editor
Digital technologies help increase fuel economy in a number of ways, some more obvious than others. For example, some solutions address the purchase price of fuel on the road. Others offer tools for managers and drivers to use for optimum fuel efficiency.
Here are some of the ways technologies can help:
UPS Matches Truck To Route
Take United Parcel Service, the biggest carrier of them all. UPS operates 88,000 vehicles around the world, including tractors, the delivery trucks they call package cars and, outside the U.S., even some motorcycles. In 2005, the company spent $2.1 billion – that's billion – on fuel. That figure includes jet fuel for the company's 269 planes, but most of the fuel was used on the ground.
UPS tracks delivery truck fuel mpg the old fashioned way, with records from the pump and odometer readings. Drivers enter those readings into DIAD (Delivery Information Acquisition Device), the brown, handheld computer UPS drivers carry.
DIAD is the fourth generation of hand-held technology UPS introduced 16 years ago. Its function is to track the movement of shipments, but drivers are prompted to enter odometer readings and other information that flows through DIAD to a proprietary preventive maintenance application.
"That provides something we can see. Just looking at vehicles we can see that some get better fuel economy than others. Side by side, they may have the same engine, they may be the same relative age, but for whatever reasons they're getting different fuel economy," said UPS spokesperson Susan Rosenberg.
"The question becomes: Do we want to shift that vehicle for fuel economy based on its route? Is it on a very concentrated urban route? Is there heavy braking? Or is it a route with more expansive distances where we will get more direct benefits from the fuel efficiency of a particular vehicle?" she explained.
Fuel economy is an important factor in redeploying a delivery truck from one route to another, although Rosenberg said that route changes are kept within a particular service area or region. For example, she explained, "there are four hub buildings in and around Atlanta (as well as UPS corporate headquarters), but they're all part of the same operating district."
Does UPS see results from this strategy?
"Absolutely," Rosenberg said.
Of course, matching truck to route for fuel economy is only practical for fleets with local and regional operations that provide both city and higher-mileage routes.
Onboard Computing Spurs Fuel Economy
Onboard computers offer another kind of opportunity to improve fuel economy, something that could apply in virtually any fleet. By monitoring and recording virtually all the functions of a given truck, an onboard computer can report on one of the most critical factors of all – how a truck is being driven.
XATA Corp., Minneapolis, Minn., provides onboard computers and mobile communications to many of the nation's largest private fleets. Its flagship technology product, XATANET, puts vehicle data where it can do the most good.
"The product itself doesn't improve fuel economy, but it provides information to management and allows them to control important factors – things like idling, speeding and shifting patterns," said XATA President Tom Flies.
"Instead of just beating up on the driver, most companies use the information to coach him. Idle is the first one they always hit. They can also show how excess speed is affecting mpg. And they'll capture and actually measure a driver's shifting pattern," Flies said.
Some XATA customers post driver rankings by mpg on bulletin boards in driver break rooms to generate fuel economy competition.
"A lot of them use financial incentives. We've also seen several fleets give company jackets, company hats and various awards for fuel economy."
Meanwhile, drivers can gauge their performance as they drive because XATANET can display mpg information in real time.
Finding The Best Fuel Buys Along The Interstate
Other technologies focus on buying fuel at the best practical price. These work best for over-the-road fleets that generally fuel on the road. The most readily available technology is computer optimization that exploits differences in truckstop fuel prices. A computer considers a truck's starting point and delivery point then weighs a number of factors. Among them are daily diesel prices along the route, capacity of a truck's tanks, the amount of fuel in them at the start and the truck's average mpg.
The applications – which include mapping and routing – then create a route that offers precise instructions on where to stop for fuel and how much to buy. Customers can limit fueling choices to preferred networks; even within networks, differences exist from one truckstop to another.
IDSC (Integrated Decision Support Corp.), Richardson, Texas, offers a menu of fuel optimization products, including Expert Fuel for truckload carrier fleets of 50 trucks or more. Expert Fuel runs on a fleet's own computer and generates optimized routes as needed.
Another IDSC product called FuelAdvice can be accessed on the Internet by anyone with a connected computer. Pay for a subscription, enter the appropriate information and you'll be provided with a detailed route for travel and plan for fuel purchase.
"The route is generated first; then the fuel solution is considered within that network of fuel stops," said IDSC's Dave Harris, who explained that routing for fuel purchase optimization has changed some in recent years.
"Some solutions calculated the route based on fuel stops first. So two different drivers going from, say, Chicago to Dallas, with different fuel levels in their tanks could be dispatched along two different routes," he said.
The process was called dynamic routing, but that has fallen out of favor. "If you route for fuel stops, you can incur out-of-route miles, which is seldom worth the effort," Harris said.
According to Harris, IDSC has added a third fuel route optimization product called In-Cab Fuel Services, provided in partnership with Qualcomm, the mobile communications people.
"Using the In-Cab service, a driver places a request for a fuel solution through his Qualcomm console. The fuel solution and the route are returned to the console, to the driver in the cab," Harris explained.
In-Cab Fuel Services was introduced in 2005, Harris said, and is popular with many owner-operators who now have a new, beneficial use for the Qualcomm equipment they may be required by their carrier to have.
Others Elements Weigh On Overall Trip Costs
But the cost of fuel is not the only dollars-and-cents consideration when planning a route. For example, tolls are a major factor, particularly in the Northeast where tolled roads, bridges and tunnels abound.
Manhattan Associates offers a fuel optimization application called Fuel&Route. Manhattan Account Executive Mike Glasgow offered a clear example of the toll problem.
"A driver going from Chicago to Philadelphia – if he's on the toll way the whole entire trip – he's going to pay almost $150 in tolls. A truck gets an average 6 mpg. Fuel optimization has been showing 3 to 5 cents a gallon in savings. There is no way you will ever save enough in fuel to justify that much money in tolls," Glasgow said.
In that instance, tolls obviously overwhelm fuel routing options. In instances where only part of a route involves tolls, the impact of those tolls is more difficult to calculate. For that reason, many fuel optimization applications take tolls into account. For its part, Manhattan Associates is partnered with ALK Technologies for Fuel&Route's underlying mapping capabilities. Fuel&Route also includes ALK/FleetSuite Tolls, a particularly accurate toll calculation application.
Another consideration in routing for fuel purchases: hours of service.
"Before the new hours of service, a driver could pull off and log time fueling as off-duty, not driving. It didn't count toward his driving time. A driver can no longer do that. Any time he pulls off the road for any reason, if it's less than two hours he has to log it as driving time," Glasgow said.
When a driver leaves the interstate to get fuel, pay for it, visit the facilities and maybe grab a snack, it has probably taken an hour, Glasgow explained.
Yet most trucking companies say an hour's worth of truck utilization is worth anywhere from $50 to $75. So unless they're saving at least $50 by turning off the interstate and fueling, they'd rather keep the truck on the road – at least if fuel is the only factor.
"Yeah, fuel is still an expense and it's still cutting into the bottom line, but I'm not saving money by making my driver waste an hour to buy 50 gallons of fuel because it's 10 cents cheaper here than it is 200 miles down the road," Glasgow said. Given that complexity, can a carrier still save money with fuel optimization?
"Absolutely. It's all tied to the length of haul," said Glasgow.
It's also tied to the size of the fueling network, he said. The longer the haul and the larger the network of available fueling stops, the more chance there is to save money.
