Tips for reducing driving costs

2nd September 2020

Category: Uncategorized

Field Service Management businesses usually require lots of driving in day to day operations and so fuel is often one of the main expenditures. keeping this in mind, if every driver were to improve their efficiency even just slightly, huge amount of money could be saved each year.

So how can this be done? Here’s a few tips to help reduce your driving costs:

Invest in the long term.

Don’t just buy vans based on the initial price. Look at the long term, whole life cost of the vehicle you’re buying. Think about factors such as fuel consumption (ideally less than 140g/km), lower fuel consumption will mean less money spent on fuel each year; it will also have lower emissions and so less tax will have to be paid. Other details such as how much maintenance will be required and how much insurance will cost should influence your decision too. If you believe in the longevity of your business, you will spend much less overall after a few years even if it means investing a bit more initially.

Fuel efficient driving

Encourage all of your drivers to adopt fuel efficient driving. According to  the Energy savings trust, you can save up to 15% on  fuel costs with ecodriving. If every person in your field service team adopts these methods, you could save thousands on fuel each year. There are approved training companies which can teach these methods, but here’s a few of the techniques used:

• Smoother driving, e.g not breaking too harshly as this uses up more fuel. try to leave room between you and the car in front.
• Get to a higher gear faster where possible as this uses less revs
• Switch off engine when stationary
• Drive slower. Driving at 70 mph uses up to 9% more fuel than at 60 mph and up to 15% more than at 50 mph, according to the Department of Transport
• Ensure tyres are sufficiently inflated as this will reduce drag
• Remove any unnecessary weight

Route planning

Route planning allows you to organize your journeys in advance so that you can go the quickest way possible. It’s also important to plan the entire journey for each destination you need to be at that day; this is to avoid driving back on yourself and to make sure the sites are visited in a logical order. Route planning software can also help with this by calculating optimal routes, taking factors such as traffic into consideration.

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