Don’t Let Excess Idling Bite You in the Bottom Line
You know excess engine idling is costing you excess cash that’s blowing out your fleet’s tailpipes. But did you know that excess idling could also cost you big-time fines? Especially if you’re based in Connecticut, Rhode Island and Vermont.
A school bus firm in Brattleboro, Vermont, found that out the hard way. It just reached a settlement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to pay $128,000 in fines and invest more than $1 million in environmental projects, all thanks to excess engine idling. Too bad company officials didn’t try voluntarily reducing idling by installing a GPS fleet tracking system. It would have cost a heck of a lot less than the settlement they reached.
We blog a lot about how GPS fleet tracking can help reduce fuel costs by monitoring engine-idle times. But several customers have asked exactly how the process works on our system. It’s pretty simple:
The idle alert is hardware-based and requires installation of the ignition wire. When enabled, idle alerts can be requested over the next 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 or 60 minutes, or set to alert you every 10 minutes via cell phone text message or email.
With Vehiclepath installed, the alert itself will only display in the vehicle history and not within the control panel. If a vehicle is idling, the end user will see a green balloon in the control panel. A counter next to the balloon indicates how long the vehicle has been idling.
Remember: GPS fleet tracking tells you exactly how long a vehicle has been idling – in real time or via minute-by-minute reports. Once you determine that a driver is leaving the engine idling longer than you require, it’s easy to implement a “no idling on surface streets” rule – because drivers know you can enforce it. But to make it a more positive experience, some fleet managers offer bonus incentives to drivers who meet their fuel-saving standards.
A robust GPS fleet tracking system can monitor precisely how long a vehicle, group of vehicles or an entire fleet is idling over a certain amount of time. You can see online where a vehicle was parked at each idling session, overlaid on familiar Google Maps. You also can print idle-time reports to discuss idling’s impact with drivers. Idling significantly affects miles per gallon because an engine burns fuel when the vehicle stands still. Unnecessary idling also adds to engine wear.
Studies show that fuel consumption can drop up to 15% if idling is significantly reduced. Large vehicles consume 0.82 gallons of fuel for every hour of idle time, while light-duty vehicles consume up to .5 gallons per hour. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that idling wastes more than 3 billion gallons of fuel annually.
With GPS fleet tracking in place to detect excessive idling, some companies write formal driver behavior plans with goals for acceptable idling, and then reward good drivers for efficient work. In Brattleboro, taxpayers should soon feel rewarded as well.
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