Eco-driving: how fleet management can help lower your impact on the environment

Eco-driving is the practice of driving in a way that is energy efficient. Making changes to your driving style will help reduce fuel consumption, vehicle emissions, increase safety, and save you money. Fleet management solutions, like autocavoFleet, can help you collect the data you need to measure the performance of your fleet and take the necessary steps to improve driving behaviors.

Following these simple tips can help you reach your eco-driving goals.

1. 1. Control your Speed: Monitoring your speed not only keeps you safer but also helps control your fuel consumption. Research shows that  gas mileage usually decreases rapidly at speeds above 50 mph (1) 
   2. Drive sensibly: Aggressive driving such as rapid acceleration and harsh braking can significantly lower your gas mileage. Set up notifications and alerts for harsh driving behaviors to help you identify drivers that require more coaching on eco-driving practices.
   3. Keep the right tire pressure: you can improve your gas mileage between 0.6% and 3% by keeping the correct tire pressure (2)
   4. Perform routine tire rotation: Tire rotation will contribute to reducing different wear patterns on your tires. Uneven wear patterns can increase your tires rolling resistance which can increase your fuel consumption. autocavoFleet provides actionable information to keep your fleet operating optimally, including setting service reminders.
   5. Plan & consolidate trips: make sure the most efficient routes are taken, use autocavoFleet’s GPS tracking feature to dispatch vehicles closer to final destinations.
   6. Avoid vehicle idling: “Personal-vehicle idling wastes about 3 billion gallons of fuel-generating around 30 million tons of CO2 annually in the U.S.” (3) Easily identify vehicles that are excessively idling and other useful insights with autocavoFleet’s detailed trip reports.
   7. Preventative maintenance: make sure that your vehicle completes all routine inspections and maintenance checks. Reports show that fleets that implemented preventative maintenance routines saw fuel savings between 5-10% (4)

autocavoFleet can give you complete visibility into your fleet’s activity, efficiency, and performance all in one place. Using the insights gained to coach drivers and improve driving efficiency has a positive impact on the environment, road safety, and overall fleet operations. Find out more on how autocavoFleet can help your business here

Sources

1. https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/driveHabits.jsp#:~:text=Aggressive%20driving%20
2. https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/maintain.jsp
3. https://afdc.energy.gov/files/u/publication/idling_personal_vehicles.pdf
4. http://www.truckingefficiency.org/operational-practices/preventive-maintenance