Fleet fuel consumption

Understanding and monitoring fuel consumption

Understanding your fleet’s fuel consumption can lead to major cost savings for your business. If you’re like most fleet managers, you’re also determined to boost efficiency and reduce your fleet’s carbon emissions. Effective fuel consumption monitoring is key to accomplishing all these goals. Use this insightful guide to understand fuel consumption and discover practical strategies to manage it.

What is fuel consumption?

Fuel consumption refers to the amount of fuel used by vehicles within a fleet over a specific time frame. It’s a critical metric in fleet management since it offers insights into vehicle performance and driving behaviour. Fuel consumption is typically measured in litres per 100 kilometres or miles per gallon. By tracking this data, you can identify opportunities to cut costs, improve driving habits and take preventive maintenance measures. Understanding fuel consumption is integral to overall fleet efficiency. Looking for insights on fuel consumption for trucks or vans? See our highly popular post on this topic, which breaks down factors affecting fuel efficiency.

The importance of monitoring fuel consumption

Clarity on fuel consumption is a critical aspect of fleet management. Lowering costs will always be a priority for fleet managers. But tracking fuel use is also about optimising your business and operating more sustainably. Here’s what you can achieve by keeping an eye on fuel consumption:

Analyse trends in your fleet’s fuel use, making it easier to streamline routes and cut back on unnecessary mileage; this helps you save fuel while also extending the lifetime of your vehicles
Identify overconsumption so you can effectively address it; for example, if certain vehicles are guzzling fuel or some routes are proving to be fuel-intensive, you’ll know which actions will support cost savings
Reduce your carbon footprint; environmental responsibility can enhance your company’s reputation with customers and the general public while contributing to its corporate social responsibility goals

Methods to monitor fuel consumption

Using a fleet management system with dashboard and reporting tools is by far the fastest and easiest way to manage fuel consumption. That’s where vehicle connectivity comes in.

You may know that CAN, or Controller Area Network, is the most important bus system in a vehicle, acting as a central networking system. And then there’s the Fleet Management System Interface, or FMS, a standardised interface that enables access to vehicle data.

When connecting to your vehicle’s FMS or CAN bus, you can analyse fuel use at the trip level. With alerts on low fuel levels, you can also act quickly in the case of unauthorised fuel use or theft. As a comprehensive fleet management solution, Webfleet offers several methods to monitor and manage fuel consumption:

Driver coaching – Webfleet detects inefficient driving and instantly notifies drivers so they can improve their fuel efficiency in the moment
Professional navigation – live updates on traffic and road conditions help you keep your drivers on the most fuel-efficient routes
Vehicle maintenance scheduling – ensure your vehicles are running in a fuel-efficient manner by automating your scheduling for regular check-ups

Viewing trips and trip details

A fleet management system enables you to leverage digital solutions to save fuel and reduce emissions. Right from your account dashboard, you can drill down to insights on a trip-by-trip basis:

See every trip your vehicles have made during the last seven days
Access information about standstills, including duration of all standstills
Look into speeding events, such as the average speed over the speed limit as a percentage
Know the day, time and severity of any driving events that took place
Understand your fuel consumption per trip, with details like trip distance, total fuel consumption and average fuel consumption

It’s important to configure the correct fuel consumption reference for your vehicles—otherwise, you won’t get accurate data. This is simple to do in Webfleet:

Select the vehicle you wish to configure
Select Edit at the bottom right of the screen
Scroll down to Reporting and locate “Fuel consumption
Select from various options:
- Account setting
- A reference set by FMS or LINK 105 if these are being used (a reference set by FMS or a LINK 105 would be advised, as this is based on the vehicle’s own parameters)
- Manuel setting
Press Save

Tracking fuel usage over time

A fleet management system gives you the power to compare fuel efficiency over time, learning from any exceptional events and historical trends in fuel use and emissions data. These dashboard insights inform actions to reduce fuel costs and optimise your fleet.

To get these valuable insights, you’ll need to retrieve fuel data from a vehicle. How you go about that depends on your fleet’s vehicle type(s) and which tracking devices are installed in them. By integrating Webfleet software with hardware from Bridgestone Mobility Solutions, you can easily monitor and report on fuel consumption for heavy and medium goods vehicles, light commercial vehicles and passenger cars.

Utilising driving performance reports

Webfleet customers have access to tutorials that help them get the most out of their dashboard insights and reporting tools. As a result, they’re better equipped to maximise driver safety, cost savings and emissions reductions.

From their Webfleet dashboard, fleet managers can gauge fuel consumption over time with historical data. They can also dive into comprehensive reports on driving events, speeding, idling, and RPM. Thinking of going electric or adding electric vehicles (EVs) to your fleet? Webfleet gives you all the tools needed to manage your EV or mixed fleet in one place.