May 2008, Work Truck - Feature
Fleets Search for Effective Anti-Idling Solutions
By Joe Bohn
With persistently high fuel prices, many fleets are still looking for ways to reduce excessive engine idling. In March, a 50-cent per gallon increase in diesel fuel, for example, really caught the attention of Russell Hemann, fleet administrative manager for Alliant Energy, based in Dubuque, Iowa.
His fleet includes about 2,500 trucks, and “when you’re using 2 million gallons of fuel a year, 50 cents is $1 million in added costs,” Hemann noted.
Along with wasting fuel, unnecessary idling also creates excessive engine wear and unnecessary pollution and noise — further inducements to clamp down on it.
Although estimates vary, International Truck & Engine Corp., for example, has estimated that a typical operator burns a half-gallon of fuel for every hour a truck idles — in the process, adding about 40 miles of engine wear and tear.
Alliant’s management and fleet department are still “struggling to come up with an effective answer” to the excessive idling problem, Hemann said.
The company has tried using internal communications with drivers to address the issue to little avail. “Has that been successful? Probably not,” said Hemann. “Statistically, we have not seen any impact of that (communications effort).”
More recently, the company has been considering driver incentives as another means of solving the idling issues. However, education, including discussions with drivers, has proven effective for TDS Telecom, headquartered in Madison, Wis.
TDS, along with Chicago-based sister company U.S. Cellular, operates about 1,900 trucks, chiefly light- and medium-duty models, according to Paul Harrison, senior administrator, eSourcing & Fleet.
The TDS fleet group has discussed the idling issue at weekly meetings and talked to technicians to make sure they’re not running their engines needlessly, said Harrison.
“It’s something that most technicians have been made aware of,” he added. As a result, “we’re not finding situations of excessive idling. Our technicians look at their van or truck as a tool to do their job. It’s a work truck as opposed to a perk truck,” he noted. Technicians idle vehicles only if using the battery for work-related purposes.
GPS Use Spreading Rapidly
In a quest to curb excess idling, a rapidly growing number of fleets of varied sizes and endeavors are now turning to global satellite positioning (GPS) tracking systems as the most cost-effective tool for curbing excessive idling and other “fuelish” driver behavior.
Formerly, GPS tracking systems were expensive; their information often had to be downloaded from a module and/or required specialized software or a dedicated computer.
But GPS hardware costs — along with monthly service fees — have dropped sharply. In addition, the ability to use the Internet to obtain the data has made the systems highly flexible. As a result, even small fleets, such as Premier Indoor Comfort Systems LLC, Canton, Ga., are now taking advantage of them.
Premier Indoor Comfort, with a fleet of 30 light-duty pickups, vans, and work body trucks, uses a real-time GPS system, supplied by Time Management Inc., Orlando, Fla., according to Tyson Swann, Premier’s owner.
Swann first began using GPS tracking when he discovered his drivers “sitting in their trucks, eating lunch, and running the air conditioning for up to an hour at a time. It was unbelievable,” he said.
His system’s hardware, consisting of a control box with wires for attachment and an antenna mounted on the vehicle, costs about $395 per truck. The hardware is so easy to install that Swann has his own mechanic do it.
Monthly service fees average about $25 per truck — even less for larger fleets, according to Mario Johnson, president of Time Management.
The company’s tracking system is used in more than 30,000 customer fleet trucks, Johnson added.
The tracking system tells an operator in real time each time a truck is started or stopped, the length and time of the trip, if the engine was left running when it arrived, if the vehicle is speeding, and various other kinds of information.
Fleet managers are also alerted with an e-mail straight to their computers, iPhone, or BlackBerry any time a driver is speeding or leaves a certain geographic area (city/county).
E-mail alerts and other feedback are available on any computer with Internet access via a sign-on.
Swann said he’s able to continually monitor the movement of his trucks, including idling time. He gets e-mail alerts on speeding vehicles, off-hour use, and other driver violations on his phone.
Such a tracking system also allows the fleet manager to view an entire fleet on a map from any computer with Internet access at any time (24-hour/7-day) and click on the vehicle to see its exact location.
A truck displayed in green on the map indicates it’s moving. Signals from the vehicle are called in every five minutes. The system can also be used to set up routes and maintenance program reminders.
Totally sold on GPS tracking, Swann said, “I guarantee a company can get its investment costs in a GPS system back within the first month or two.”
Piedmont Landscape Contractors LLC, located in Chamblee, Ga. with fleet of 90 light and medium trucks, uses two GPS providers, according to Dan Headley, fleet manager.
Both provide the same service, aimed at reducing fuel costs and idling time. Networkcar, headquartered in San Diego, is used in some of Piedmont’s trucks and FleetBoss Global Positioning Solutions of Fern Park, Fla., runs in others.
Headley noted that one of the GPS providers charges a little more, though the overall monthly service charges from both average about $30 per truck.
Noting the precision of the data he gets from the tracking systems, “I can tell whether the drivers are eating lunch and how many toothpicks they’re using,” Headley said.
“I can tell how fast they’re going, pull up a map, and click on it to tell where they were, what time they left, how long they’ve been idling, how many miles on it — everything,” he added.
Headley has been using GPS tracking to help control excessive idling for about 2½ years and values its cost-effectiveness.
“It gives me all the control I need,” he concluded.