Why Care
Are you using commercial vehicles in your company? Then you might have heard the term “Green Driving”.
For the past couple of years, it’s been somewhat of an industry buzzword, and the majority of the leading telematics solution providers today are offering a number of functionalities and features that allow your fleet to drive greener and save on key maintenance costs and reducing the overall fuel consumption for your fleet.
In this blog post, we will give you a few tips on how to make your fleet thrive by making it greener. Before we give you our top 5, we want to answer a couple of questions you might already have at this point.
What is Green Driving?
Green Driving is using a vehicle in a way that deliberately and consistently uses minimal amounts of fuel (resources) to complete a journey. It’s a conscious approach to your driving behaviour and how you manage your vehicles, with the purpose of leaving as small an environmental footprint as possible.
Why should I care about Green Driving?
It’s the environment, duh! Since vehicles and today’s ways of commercial transportation are run almost exclusively on fossil resources, vehicles are a big contributor to Global Warming. By reducing the number of gasses and toxic particles into the air, we reduce the damage we cause to our planet. But if the environment card won’t persuade you, then maybe another shade of green will do the job, as it is also about saving you money. Yes, the money you will save in the company’s bottom line by implementing green driving.
This follows as a result of you using less fuel and reducing your maintenance costs as the consequence of the smoother driving of your vehicles. Poorly maintained vehicles use more fuel on average, and harsh driving habits as well as excessive idling – even more so. Vehicles that are cared for, together with good driving conduct on the road, will save you up to 15% in costs.
Finally, you will significantly lower the risks of road accidents and speeding tickets by coaching your drivers on how to plan, operate and drive your vehicles safer and greener. Those are the type costs that can amount to tens of thousands of dollars and inflate your fleet insurance premiums.
So, here is some advice and tips on how to go green and how to work towards a greener fleet.
Top 5 Tips for Green Driving
1. Invest in a fleet management solution.
The first step is all about getting access to the right data. By investing in a fleet management solution like Fleet Complete, you have taken the first step towards Green Driving and secured yourself access to the important data. This data you will need in order to analyze the performance of your vehicle fleet.
2. Keep your fleet upgraded.
Make sure you keep your fleet as new and upgraded as possible. New vehicles are more eco-friendly than older vehicles. By either leasing or buying newer vehicles, you make sure that the overall emissions are kept to a minimum.
3. Award your best driver.
Motivation is key to engaging your drivers and workers in driving more conscientiously and greener. Key elements of a green driving behaviour are moderated speed, breaking, acceleration, and minimum idling. With access to driver data, you will be able to give a score, based on the driving behaviour of each driver in your company. This makes it possible to arrange monthly competitions among your drivers and make it more a lot more fun to go green. The bonus is that at the same time you will experience that your fuel costs will go down, in combination with the reduction of general wear and tear of your fleet.
4. Sharing is caring.
By investing in a fleet management solution, you will be able to identify whether or not you, in fact, need the number of vehicles you have at your disposal and right-size it. For some companies, car sharing will be the answer to helping the fleet move towards greener driving and saving money at the same time. With Driver ID solutions, you can easily manage a fleet with more workers than cars. This will save you money in both fuel, leasing costs and, of course, help the environment by lowering emissions from abundant vehicles.
5. Keep up a regular maintenance.
Use your fleet management solution to keep track of when your vehicles are due for service. Engines that run smoothly will emit fewer amounts of toxins into the air and use up less fuel. Also, keep a close eye on your tires, as tires that are not properly inflated will increase your overall fuel consumption.
