Category: Fleet News

When you’re operating a fleet, keeping costs as low as possible is a key consideration if you’re going to turn a profit. And one of the main costs for any road-based business is always fuel.

However, it’s important to remember that fuel is a controllable expense, not one that simply needs to burn through money. In order to boost efficiency, you’ll want to ensure that you’re always using the best types of fuel for your business needs.

But how will you know which is the best choice if you’re thinking of upgrading your vehicles? Let’s take a look at the four main options currently available.

Petrol

Petrol vehicles have typically been the most popular on Britain’s roads, largely because they’re the cheapest to both buy and refuel. They are also getting greener thanks to the addition of features like turbochargers and fewer cylinders.

However, they can be prone to overheating and they still emit unburned hydrocarbons, particulates and carbon monoxide from their exhausts. This meant that when emissions first began to be used as a factor in taxes paid on company cars, many businesses opted to switch to diesel.

Diesel

A high proportion of fleet owners have traditionally opted for diesel vehicles, with brands such as Transit having built reputations for solidity and reliability. They usually have a longer lifespan and can actually offer better fuel consumption than petrol engines.

Indeed, diesel vehicles can use up to 30 per cent less fuel and emit 20 per cent less carbon dioxide than their petrol counterparts. However, they unfortunately emit far more exhaust particulate matter, particularly nitrous oxide. This can penetrate the human lungs due to its respirable size.

With research linking air pollution to thousands of deaths per year in built-up areas, this is undoubtedly a concern. Diesel shouldn’t be written off just yet, though, as carmakers are fighting back. New tech such as filters and additives aim to remove the dangerous particles before they are pumped into the atmosphere.

Hybrid

Hybrid vehicles are powered using a combination of a petrol or diesel engine and an electric battery, with the battery recharged while the vehicle is driven or through braking. Plug-in hybrids can also be charged from an external power supply.

This type of vehicle is becoming ever-more popular among fleet owners, as they can cut carbon dioxide emissions by as much as a quarter compared to petrol. Meanwhile, Which? research suggests petrol-hybrids are the most reliable type of engine.

However, range can still be an issue if longer trips are required, with hybrids most suited to shorter journeys around urban areas due to battery limitations.

All-electric

With no fossil fuel-based engine at all, all-electric vehicles (EVs) are powered purely with a battery and an electric motor. That means they’re about as green as you can get – zero emissions whatsoever are emitted while driving, plus they can usually be charged up from a standard power point (although super-fast charging may require dedicated infrastructure).

Fleet owners could also enjoy the added benefits of fewer moving parts meaning lower costs in areas such as servicing in the long term.

As with hybrid vehicles, distance per battery charge can still be a drawback when it comes to EVs, but this is something that is improving all the time. Manufacturers such as Tesla now boast EVs that can comfortably last more than 200 miles, meaning most fleet drivers should be covered without having to stop for more juice.

Assessing what you’ll need

The best way to work out which of the above is best for your fleet is to take a look at your current performance, define where you want to be and then look for opportunities for improvement.

Ask yourself:

• Who is travelling and how often?
• How far are your fleet drivers going?
• What type of environment are they travelling in?
• How important are your green credentials?

This should provide insight into which vehicle and fuel choice (or combination) is best for your particular circumstances.

How fuel cards can help

If you’re keen to collect more information about the fuel your fleet is currently using, a great option could be to issue fuel cards. You may already have seen these on garage forecourts, with companies that use Shell fuel, for example, able to pay with a Shell card.

Drivers simply charge the cost of fuel to their employer’s account and the final bills are paid monthly in arrears.

They are beneficial in this case as most fuel cards will issue economy reports as part of their service, which can then be used to analyse consumption and easily see where improvements can be made.

Other benefits of fuel cards include:

• Discounts on purchases
• Ability to separate business and personal mileage
• Reduction in administration
• More secure in the event of theft
• Incentive to drivers to cover fewer miles and drive more economically

Environment a bigger part of public policy

With green issues now a key focus for the government, it may be that we will all soon be required to make more environmentally-friendly choices when it comes to what we’re driving.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that there needs to be a 50 per cent reduction in global emissions compared to 1990 levels by 2050, while the UK government has set even more ambitious targets of 80 per cent.

Electrification of car and van fleets is being seen as a big part of this, although much criticism has been aimed at ministers for failing to have a true masterplan for the decarbonisation of transport.

For instance, the Committee on Climate Change said it wants to see greater incentives for commercial fleets to buy more efficient vehicles, which may include tax breaks and better charging infrastructure for HGVs.

Which fuel is best for you?

In the meantime, with petrol and diesel vehicle sales set to continue on top of the other options until 2030, the choice of fuel essentially remains down to the fleet manager.

However, by taking into account the business requirements, lifecycle costs, data monitoring and environmental concerns detailed above, you should hopefully now have a better idea about what fuel choice would be best for your fleet. Contact us to find out more about fuel types and which fuel card would work best for you.

Earth’s rainforests receive high levels of rainfall each year, often up to 400 inches compared with less than 40 in the UK. A great deal of this rainfall comes from the fact that rainforest is often self-watering. Through transpiration, plants release water into the local atmosphere. This creates a dense cloud cover that you see hanging over rainforest canopy. Even when it’s not raining, these clouds keep the rainforest ecosystem humid and warm. It’s this immense heat and humidity that has meant a vast range of animals and plants have adapted to this specific climate over the years.

At the global level, rainforests drive the flow of water as rain. They are the centre of the water cycle, circulating water vapour and feeding rivers that eventually take water back to the oceans. Evaporation from the oceans is seeded by organic dust and particles created by the trees themselves. It is a remarkable system, working simultaneously at microscopic and planetary levels, full of intricacies and interdependencies.

But this means that as rainforests shrink, droughts increase, both locally and around the world. Evidence is already showing that forest loss in the tropics is already affecting crop growth worldwide. At the local level, despite the huge volume of water found in and produced by rainforest, access to the right amount of water is becoming more problematic for local people.

There are increasing reports of rivers turned gold from mining waste in the Amazon, palm plantations polluting coastal waters in Papua New Guinea and sea-level rise flooding crops and causing havoc on sanitation systems. It’s why your support is so vital, both locally and globally. You’re keeping rainforest standing at the heart of the water cycle, by supporting local communities with access to good quality water and to cope with the effects of deforestation and climate breakdown.

In recent years, your investment provided fresh-water storage tanks and flood-resistant toilets to reduce local pollution in Papua New Guinea, tippy-taps to provide safe handwashing and fish ponds to avoid fishing in rivers with mining pollution. All alongside helping develop sustainable incomes that work with the forest, help people earn a living and reduce pressure on their forest. Healthy families mean healthy forest, and that often starts with something easy to take for granted; water.

It’s why keeping rainforest standing is not only vital for those who call rainforest home but for us all, to ensure Earth’s systems that we all rely on are kept in balance. The support Cool Earth receives is not only protecting forest, it’s also helping address the increasing challenges of getting good, clean water in the right places for local people.

Fuel card services are working with Cool Earth to mitigate global carbon emissions by preserving the most threatened rainforests. Get in touch now to find out more about what we’re doing to help.

All UK companies have a legal obligation to ensure their employees don’t suffer any unreasonable or preventable harm or loss in the workplace. This is known as duty of care.

Employers can be found liable is an employee or a member of the public is harmed or incurs loss as a result of negligence. Therefore, it is vital that all fleet operators carry out the relevant safety checks on owned vehicle to make sure that they’re safe to use.

It’s important to note that if a vehicle is owned by a company, it is considered a place of work, so healthy and safety rules apply just as they would within an office, warehouse or any other workplace. According to the department of transport, over a quarter of road traffic accidents may involve someone who is driving as part of their work obligations.

When it comes to road safety, much of the legal responsibility is on the driver. That’s why it is up to you to ensure your vehicle is safe, well maintained, insured and that it is being driven in a safe manner. An employee caught driving recklessly is responsible for any offence that comes as result.

However, employers also shoulder some of the responsibility for their employees’ actions. For example, employers are liable for the death or injury of an employee or injury of an employee caused by another employee through negligence.

Additionally, both parties may be found liable if a driver is caught speeding as a result of impractical employer scheduling.

What this means for fleets

For fleet operators, it’s important to acknowledge that company owned vehicles are considered the workplace, and that you have an obligation to ensure those vehicles are correctly insured and are safe to drive. It’s also important that you set up ‘safe systems of work’ procedures to assess and minimise the work-related risks and hazards your drivers could face.

As a fleet manager, there are three areas of risk management you should focus on in order to comply with duty of care:

Vehicle

All company-owned vehicles should be suitable for the job at hand and should meet the driver’s needs. Security is also a priority, not just for the driver, but for all road users. Regular maintenance checks and inspections are essential for maintaining the highest possible standards.

Driver

Before employing a new driver, ensure they are properly vetted and that appropriate checks are done on their licence. Make sure that they’re given a thorough induction to the fleet procedures and policies, especially for accident reporting.

Journey

Setting realistic journey targets for your drivers is an important part of safeguarding their welfare. Properly planning their journey reduces the likelihood of speeding or driver fatigue, while also improving the moral of your employees and reducing the risk of work-related ill health.

Tackling your duty of care obligations

There are a number of ways that a company can tackle professional duty of care when it comes to their drivers; from carrying out continuing education through risk assessments and in-vehicle driver training, to classroom based training courses, e-training and documentation.

While drivers should perform daily checks on their vehicles before each journey, companies should also carry out safety checks on vehicles themselves. This is to ensure that they are serviced and maintained regularly.

Every aspect of this process should be recorded in internal management systems and procedures to ensure that, in the event of an incident or accident, there is a clearly defined and identifiable audit trail available.

Duty of care and grey fleet management

Many companies still allow employees, especially those that do not qualify for a company car, to use their own vehicle on company business and reclaim a mileage allowance.

Such vehicles are typically referred to as ‘grey fleet’ vehicles, this is because although they are not company owned, the company does have a professional duty of care towards them and could still be liable for any accidents or incidents in which the drivers of grey fleet vehicles are involved.

Research has shown that grey fleet vehicles are usually older than company-owned vehicles. In addition, they might not have been serviced as regularly and the condition of the tyres may be in generally poorer condition. Moreover, drivers in many instances might only have social, domestic and pleasure insurance, rather than the necessary cover for business use.

But, if anything happens while such a car is in use on company business, it is the company, as well as the employee driving the vehicle, who can be held liable.

It is certainly in the company’s best interest to ensure its employees only use grey fleet vehicles that are fit for purpose and are regularly serviced, as there is a whole raft of legislation under which a company could be found to be negligible.

At Fuel Card Services, we offer a range of fleet management services that can help you fulfil your duty of care for your fleet. Get in touch today to find out more.

From an early age, the creatures that call the rainforest home capture our imagination. It’s where, for most of us, our love for nature and the rainforest starts.

Whether it’s toucans or tigers, sloths or spectacled bears, frogs or funghi, rainforest plants and animals make up an intricate web of inter-reliant species.

People are a vital part of this web too. Often, we just think of human impact on species as a negative one. But indigenous-managed lands are increasingly being shown an essential haven for rainforest wildlife.

Indigenous people are inheritors and practitioners of unique ways of relating to people and the environment, protecting nearly 22% of Earth’s surface and 80% of biodiversity. With support, this makes them powerful stakeholders when responding to climate change and conservation challenges. In fact, across the Amazon, average annual deforestation rates inside tenured indigenous forestlands were 2-3 times lower than outside of them from 2000 to 2012.

Recognising the achievements and contributions made by indigenous peoples to wildlife conservation, land stewardship and climate mitigation is essential. It’s why Cool Earth’s model keeps forest conservation in the hands of local people, empowering the people who have the most impact.

“Only through rights-based, equitable and respectful partnerships with indigenous peoples, will it be possible to ensure the long-term and equitable conservation of biodiversity.”

Local and indigenous knowledge must be integral when developing meaningful practices that tackle the adverse impacts of climate change. Thanks to your support, Cool Earth works to share local knowledge and develop the best ways to protect rainforest globally. With help to develop their climate, financial and social resilience, we believe that indigenous and local communities have the potential to be the greatest rainforest custodians. Keeping wildlife-homing, carbon-storing, rain-making trees standing strong for years to come.

Rainforests play an essential, but often overlooked role in tackling the climate crisis. By working alongside CoolEarth, we’re doing our part to keep this incredible ecosystem strong.

Fleet managers have to balance a wide range of issues. Planning routes, scheduling maintenance, working out expenses and ensuring regulations are followed, all place pressure on these professionals’ time. This is not to mention the constant demands to keep productivity high and costs low.

However, there are a few steps you can take to make your job more efficient and deliver the best results for the business. With the help of a good fleet management system, you can ensure all your drivers and vehicles are operating to their full potential, tackle issues before they turn into major problems, and cut costs.

Here are ten things you should therefore be doing to make the most of your assets.

1.  Access real-time information

The first thing any fleet manager needs in order to work effectively is full visibility into their cars, vans and drivers. This means having access to real-time data that can show them at a glance the location of every vehicle and employee, what their status is and if there are any issues.

To do this, you’ll need an effective telematics system. This connects to a vehicle’s computer and uses a range of sensors to give information on everything from its location and speed to driver inputs. This can be fed constantly back to base via mobile networks or even satellites. As a result, fleet managers are always up-to-date.

Real-time data is also essential for many of the below solutions, so if you don’t have it you’ll be working with one hand tied behind your back.

2.  Implement GPS tracking

A key part of any real-time information solution will be instant details of your fleet’s locations via GPS. This can be vital if you need to dispatch an employee to a certain destination, as you can see at a glance who is available and best-positioned to respond.

However, it can also be used to help record mileage and hours spent on the road, divert drivers away from areas of congestion and even provide customers with real-time updates on when they can expect your employees to arrive.

3.  Improve route planning

GPS tools can also be used in combination with other tech solutions to improve your firms’ route planning. This isn’t just about finding the shortest way from A to B. It should also take into account factors such as expected fuel consumption along the route and the distance to the cheapest filling stations.

For example, if a vehicle is spending a lot of time stuck in traffic with the engine idling, this results in greater fuel consumption and higher costs. With good route planning tools, this can be avoided.

4.  Monitor driver behaviour

Being able to keep an eye on how your employees are driving is also essential. First and foremost, this improves safety. If fleet telematics data shows frequent speeding, or sensors detect harsh control inputs, you can step in to address this. You can even generate league tables that show your best and worst-performing drivers, highlighting who you need to speak to most urgently.

This can also help reduce fuel consumption. By monitoring inputs such as acceleration and braking, you can educate employees to drive more smoothly as well as safely. Indeed, almost half of businesses (49 per cent) using telematics have seen a reduction in speeding incidences and fines, while 55 per cent experienced a drop in fuel usage.

5.  Reduce your fuel costs

While better route planning and driver monitoring can help improve your fuel consumption, you should also make sure you’re not paying over the odds at the pump. To do this, it pays to have a suitable fuel card for your usage.

There are a wide range of products to choose from, so it’s important to get this right. It may be the case that the cheapest option isn’t very convenient for your firm. You also need to consider whether you’d benefit from cards with wider motorway networks, for example, and which brands have locations nearest your most common routes.

6.  Predict maintenance

Breakdowns can be a major headache for fleet managers. As well as the direct costs to fix problems, having vehicles off the road unexpectedly also hurts the firm’s productivity. You can avoid this by using the data taken from telematics systems to predictively schedule maintenance. These tools can highlight potential issues and allow you to step in before they turn into serious problems.

7.  Automate your expenses

Admin work is often among the most time-consuming parts of a fleet manager’s job. Working out details such as mileage claims, expenses, fuel MPG and other details are essential but tedious activities. But with the right fleet management systems, this doesn’t have to be the case.

Being able to calculate these figures automatically, based on data recorded by the telematics system, doesn’t just free up your time. It also ensures the data is accurate and can highlight any unusual events – such as vehicles doing significantly more miles than expected – for investigation.

8.  Set up security alerts

Spotting and cracking down on authorised usage is also essential. For example, you can set up alerts that let you know if a vehicle is being used outside normal office hours. You can also establish geofencing to warn you if a car goes beyond a certain area.

This isn’t only useful for identifying any employees using company assets for personal use. It can also help you quickly track down any stolen vehicle, using GPS tracking to guide police directly to it.

9.  Tackle fuel fraud

Another major concern for many fleet managers is the risk of fuel fraud, such as employees filling personal vehicles using a company fuel card or making claims for miles they haven’t done. Telematics can help spot issues with expenses, while a good fuel card can also help by ensuring vehicle locations match fuel card usage, for example.

10. Manage your vehicle inventory

A good fleet management system can also help keep track of your vehicle inventory. This allows you to better plan ahead for replacements, get alerts when services or MOTs are due, and prepare your finances.

You can also see at a glance details such as the types of fuel used, which will be important to know when selecting a fuel card, and can factor into future buying decisions. For instance, if the majority of your fleet is petrol-powered, you may want to consider phasing out any remaining diesels to simplify your operations.

If you want to know more about how effective fleet management systems can benefit your business, get in touch with our team today.