CAB Trucking Fuel Management and Consumption Project
CAB Trucking Fuel Management and Consumption Project
Background and Need Statement
Over the course of the last 15 months there has been a rapid rise in the cost of fuel. This rapid rise has had a negative impact on our bottom line and happened at a pace that made it hard for us to pass on these costs to our customers. The current industry standard for determining fuel surcharges depends on the U.S. Energy Department’s On-Highway Diesel price, which tends to run two months behind. This does not allow us to raise our fuel surcharge to reflect current pricing at the pumps.
The trucking industry as a whole has begun to look more closely at ways to improve fuel consumption rates. Initial steps taken by the trucking industry as a whole have included a no left turn policy and have asked drivers to reduce their speeds from an average of 65mph to 60mph. Furthermore, the trucking industry has also begun looking at vehicle maintenance, routing, and driver performance to find ways to improve fuel use efficiencies.
As we have a mixture of routes and non-routes available, we have additional challenges that will need to be looked at apart from those being considered by the trucking industry as a whole. We have embraced technology before in our efforts to be a green company. To reduce the amount of paperwork and improve the process of recording shipments we have used electronic hand pads. Looking to technology, we hope we will find the solution to help us out in this very important matter as well. We want to look at several ways to improve our use of our available fuel.
One important aspect of the project will focus on placing GPS units in all our vehicles and we want them to be able to tra ...