Drive down the street, read the paper, or listen to the radio, and you’ll see that fuel prices are increasing everywhere. And for delivery services, fuel cost is already one of the biggest working expenses. 

The most common way to directly reduce any fuel-related costs is to lower the amount needed. An easy method to lower fuel economy across your fleet is by coaching drivers on more fuel-efficient driving, which can save you hundreds of dollars per vehicle in fuel each year, improve driver safety, and prevent wear and tear on your vehicle. 

What Fuel-Efficient Driving Techniques Should Your Drivers Adopt?

1. Accelerate gently

The harder you accelerate the more fuel is wasted due to tire rolling and air resistance. The vehicle will see it as a request for a power boost, burning more fuel than would actually be needed to reach the same speed more gradually.

2. Maintain a steady speed

Constantly switching between high and low speeds uses more fuel, and vehicles use increasingly more fuel the faster they go. While vehicles reach optimal fuel economy at different speeds, fuel economy usually decreases rapidly at speeds above 50 MPH/90 KMH. Ease onto the accelerator gently and consider using cruise control when on the highway. 

3. Don’t slam the breaks

Slamming the breaks all the time forces vehicles to work harder when accelerating and consumes more fuel. Instead, let your foot off the accelerator early allowing the vehicle to break speed and coast to a stop. In addition to saving fuel, it also reduces wear and tear and makes it more likely you will reach a traffic light as it turns green again. 

4. Reduce excess weight

Excess weight in a vehicle can increase fuel consumption and cost. While it might seem insignificant, this weight across multiple vehicles over an entire year can add up to be a major expense. Instead, ensure your vehicles are kept clear of unnecessary packages, equipment, or personal items.  

5. Optimize routing

Careful route planning is an essential element in making timely deliveries and saving fuel. An optimized route allows you to cut mileage by planning your route ahead of time and finding the shortest one. 

That said, finding ways to increase fuel economy isn’t enough to see big business savings, and this is especially true if your delivery service includes a large fleet of drivers. 

At Mapbox, we’ve optimized every phase that goes into a delivery business: designing distribution networks, dispatching orders efficiently, protecting drivers, and delivering to the right place on time. 

At each step of your delivery workflow, our solutions will save you money in various ways, including a reduction in fuel consumption. Take a closer look at how you currently operate at each phase and compare it with our logistics solutions.  

Design

Sometimes the key to using less fuel is redesigning your distribution network with efficiency in mind. Are your drivers going back and forth across town multiple times a day because your warehouse is too far from your customers? It might be more cost-effective to spend more money on prime real estate and cover the additional cost in fuel savings. Are drivers idling in traffic at the same spot every morning? With real-time maps and Movement Data, Mapbox can help you determine if getting your drivers on the road earlier each morning can help avoid traffic congestion, saving time and fuel.

Dispatch

Leverage the Mapbox Matrix APIs to select the best driver to complete a delivery based on the distance or travel time to the pickup or dropoff points. For drivers with more than one delivery, the Optimization API helps reorder stops to save time and distance. Current customers are saving up to 20% on fuel each day with the optimization of routes.

Protect

Delivery drivers are busier than ever moving orders from pick-up to drop-off points and there are always risks involved along the way. Keep track of your vehicles' precise location to spot unnecessary detours, rapid accelerations, and other behaviors that waste fuel so that managers can coach drivers. Mapbox Vision acts as a second set of eyes on the road to help track driver activity and alert driver’s in real-time. 

Deliver 

Harness the power of the Navigation SDK to provide optimized routes to your drivers. Minimize driving time with daisy-chained Pick-up and Drop-offs, enabling your drivers to get the work done faster while tracking their efficiencies. 

A Solution that Saves for both you and the Environment 

Produce energy savings for your business while leaving our world in a better place than it is today. Optimizing your delivery process, while also adopting fuel-efficient driving techniques, will not only improve overall performance and help you save on fuel costs but will also make your logistics greener. 

Learn more about Mapbox Logistics.