Arsenault Associates has launched a fuel efficiency initiative for its flagship Dossier fleet maintenance management software systems with a goal of achieving an average fuel cost reduction of 10% for fleet customers.
According to Charles Arsenault, chief executive officer, “We will focus on the three items with the greatest influence on fuel economy: drivers, tire pressure, and vehicle operations. Our target is to increase our customer's mpg by a minimum of .5 mpg with an overall fuel cost reduction goal of 10%. While .5 mpg may not sound like much, consider that a fleet of 50 tractors averaging 100,000 miles per year per unit that averages 6 mpg, has a fuel burn rate of 833,000 gallons. At $5 per gallon, that's $4,166,500.
The new fuel initiative should yield a minimum of .5 mpg increase, reducing the example fleet's fuel consumption by 64,000 gallons — equating to a savings of $320,347 or a 7.6% cost reduction by itself, he said.
Dossier will provide automated operational efficiency comparisons that will rank drivers by efficiencies and variations to equipment norms. This will help fleet managers identify problem drivers and quickly raise the fleet's mpg mean average.
Using automation to address tires with chronic low pressure is an important part of achieving fuel savings. According to Arsenault, commercial vehicles with tires underinflated by as little as 15% will raise fuel consumption by 2.5%. Keeping tires properly inflated and knowing which ones have chronic air pressure issues will save the example fleet of 50 tractors $104,165 annually.
The new Dossier Tire Management system successfully completed beta testing and is now fully available. Access www.arsenault.biz for more details.