Aug/Sept 2008

Whether your concern is the rising cost of fuel or the environmental impact caused by using it, telematics systems are coming into their own as a means of fighting back, says Sharon Clancy

Talk to most logistics or distribution companies about steps they can take to measure the environmental impact of their operations, and the response is likely to be lukewarm unless those businesses or their customers have a high public profile, and are keen to be seen to be playing their part.

Talk to the same logistics companies, however, about taking steps to minimise their fuel bill, and their interest level will rise dramatically.

Well, here's the good news: this is one of those rare win-win situations. By reducing fuel consumption, transport users automatically also reduce the environmental impact of their business. The less fuel that is used, the lower the carbon emissions.

 

Anyone who drives will appreciate just how much fuel costs have risen this year. The cost of filling a tank has gone up by between and third and 50 per cent. Spare a thought, then, for truck operators. Those with fleets of rigid urban delivery trucks think they are doing well to achieve between 18 and 24 mpg, while for a long-distance fully-laden 44-tonne articulated tractor unit, anything between 8.5 mpg and 10 mpg is a good benchmark, depending on the vehicle's age and how it is being driven.

Divide those figures into the distance travelled by these vehicles in a year – typically 40,000 miles for an urban delivery truck and 80,000 to 100,000 a year for tractor units – and it becomes clear why operators have always kept a close eye on fuel consumption. Even half a mile more per gallon can reduce fuel bills significantly.

Several key measures can be brought to bear to reduce fuel consumption: precise monitoring of vehicle and driver performance; optimisation of delivery routes so that vehicles travel as few miles as possible; and consolidation of traffic to reduce the number of vehicles visiting each delivery point. Telematics has a key role to play in delivering these potential savings.

'Most companies can monitor their impact on the environment without investing in sophisticated technology,' says Roger Marks, managing director of telematics and work management specialist Aeromark. 'The difficulty comes when you want to reduce that environmental impact. The simple way is to reduce the amount of unnecessary mileage and improve the way the necessary miles are driven.'

At the risk of stating the obvious, keeping accurate records of how much fuel is issued to each vehicle is the starting point, even if all the vehicles in the fleet are virtually identical in specification and operate on unvarying routes. Measuring miles per gallon routinely will allow comparisons between similar vehicles driving the same routes.

Monitoring individual driver performance is an essential weapon in cutting carbon footprint. According to the Department for Transport, monitoring driver performance can regularly save average fuel savings of 5 per cent on heavier trucks.

At the simplest level, you simply record the fuel issued to each vehicle and the mileage it does for a particular trip. Some fleet operators are very good at recording the fuel issued to particular vehicle and the miles travelled. However, although this gives you a good indication of average mpg, it won't tell you how one driver compares with another.

Btrack Systems, another tracking specialist, says there can be variances of up to 20 per cent in fuel economy on vehicles where drivers switch between vehicles, even where driver training has been done. It recommends an in-cab display to encourage drivers to maintain good habits.

The company also argues that for true accuracy in monitoring fuel consumption, operators should not just rely on data derived from the built-in CANbus data stream now standard on many goods vehicles, but should additionally fit vehicles with a purpose-designed fuel flow meter.

'Because of CANbus variables, fuel consumption figures can vary from vehicle make to make,' explains sales director Andy Walker. 'Using a fuel flow meter significantly improves the mpg accuracy.

Btrack's Blue Box fuel monitoring uses a Swiss-made AIC fuel flow meter which is said to have an accuracy of 99.5 per cent. But he adds that to make full use of the information, 'you do need to identify drivers as well as vehicles.'

Despite the possible limitations, capturing data from the CANbus is proving popular, not least because of the additional vehicle and driver telemetry data it can deliver. The usual method is to extract data via the FMS port (the initials stand for Fleet Management System, an international standard). This allows third-party devices to 'listen' to the data being sent along the vehicle CANbus (Controller Area Network) – the electronic data spine that controls various systems on modern trucks – without being able to interfere with it in any way.

Some companies claim they can extract data directly from the CANbus without using the FMS port, but the vehicle manufacturers, concerned that there will be unwitting interference with a critical safety system, say doing so will invalidate the vehicle warranty.

While some deep-level data is not available through the FMS connection, there is certainly enough to help any company start monitoring those elements that make a huge contribution to fuel consumption. Data includes vehicle speed, odometer mileage, engine speed, throttle position, gear selection, braking, engine idling, engagement of cruise control and, of course, fuel consumption.

'The CANbus interface available on many vehicles means there are greater opportunities to gain more accurate measurement of driver behaviour,' agrees Aeromark's RogerMarks.

However, he warns that operators need to look at the cost of using the data. 'Take account of the return on investment offered by each measurement technology, rather than letting yourself be overwhelmed by features and detail. Many systems that offer too much detail are often relegated to a PC in the corner of the office, allowing little practical time to manage the mass of information produced.'

This year has seen a host of vehicle tracking and telematics suppliers add CANbus data capture to their products. The CANbus telemetry data can be sent back to base wirelessly at the same time as the location data.

Verilocation's version is called VL-CANbus, and the company says that four-week trials with several haulage companies indicated potential fuel savings of between 5 and 10 per cent. The data is summarised into 'journey events' which are analysed to provide information about each driver's performance. The system can be configured to provide instant alerts for events such as fuel siphoning or over-speeding.

Masternaut Vehicle Intelligence (MVI) includes monitoring of driving time and waiting time for drivers' hours records as well as the in-depth reporting of on-board telemetry data.

Cybit has added CANBus data to its Fleetstar-Online telematics package. 'One of the most publicised business issues this year is carbon neutrality,' says John Wisdom, the company's sales and marketing director, 'and business are now being scrutinised for their efficiency in their use of fuel.

'Reducing unnecessary mileage is a guaranteed way to burn less fuel, and so takes a user-company a large step in the right direction. New developments that link CANBus engine data reports on vehicle performance analysis with positioning data will further help manage fleets to reduce fuel emissions.'

Cybit says research has shown that vehicles burn 10 per cent less fuel when they are driven within the speed limits, so effective management can reduce emissions significantly.

CMS has added Ecotrak to its Supatrak vehicle tracking package. 'Measuring driver and vehicle performance is the key to reducing fuel consumption and costs,' says managing director Jason Airey. 'EcoTrak can save you up to 10 per cent on your fuel bill. It highlights fuel-heavy practices such as excessive idling and over-speeding, and presents them in easy-to understand pie charts. Armed with the facts, operators should find it much easier to incentivise drivers by, for example, giving them a target of a one per cent reduction in the time spent idling.'

With so much data being recorded, the problem for many companies has become one of determining how to use the information about their activities to improve performance. That's why flexibility to manipulate and present the data in a variety of formats is one of the key features of the new generation telematics systems that have come on to the market in the past year.

These new-generation systems are essentially exception reporting, and often use the increasingly popular 'traffic-light' system of presenting data; information is flagged up on screen in red, amber or green, so managers can immediately identify problem areas. However, what they now add is more flexibility for operators to set their own parameters for various parts of their operation, along with provision to incorporate data in their reports from a wider variety of sources. So it's easier to drill down a few levels to investigate further and have more tailored reports.

Aeromark's Web-based Optimatics telematics package, with its Smartdash graphical user interface, is typical of this new generation of telematics systems. It collects data from various sources and presents it in formats that help companies measure costs and identify under-performing parts of their business quickly.

'Smartdash enables managers to analyse and monitor key performance indicators without the need to tie up huge levels of resources, time and investment in bespoke software or complex spreadsheets that would otherwise be necessary to produce accurate analysis of all the different data sources,' says Marks. Factors under scrutiny might include service levels, costs and carbon emissions. The CO2 reports for example, analyses trends in CO2 emission per unit of work, and can reduce speed thresholds, whilst at the same time measuring the impact on service levels in real time.

Driving style monitoring is among the features that have been added to the latest version of Isotrak's Advanced Transport Management System (ATMS), along with additional CANbus functionality.

'Monitoring the performance and driving styles of over 500 drivers on a site is not easy,' points out sales and marketing director Craig Sears-Black. 'The quickest ROI comes from identifying the worst-performing drivers and retraining them to raise the average fuel consumption. Everyone focuses on capturing and producing the data, but it is just as important to establish how you are going to use the data and engage the drivers in bringing out change.'

Relying on average fuel consumption is not sufficient, he warns. 'You have to demonstrate to drivers that any red flag raised by the system about their performance has already taken into account factors outside the drivers' control, such as above-average loadings or exceptionally poor weather or bad congestion. You also have to show that it takes account of the type of vehicle, the routes being driven and the locations visited. Then drivers don't feel comparisons are unfair.'

Optimising routes and schedules, of course, automatically reduces your carbon footprint and can have a significant impact on the environmental efficiency of a transport operation. The European Logistics Users, Providers & Enablers Group (ELUPEG) says that unladen trucks travel 85 billion kilometres a year on European roads, accounting for 100,000 million tonnes of carbon.

'There is a lot of talk about *green initiatives' such as hybrid vehicles, bio-fuels and so on,' says Will Salter, chief executive of routing and scheduling specialist Paragon, 'but a lot can be done to reduce carbon emissions simply by planning more cleverly and then monitoring your optimised plan more closely. Linking scheduling systems to live tracking helps companies identify common practices that waste fuel and incur unnecessary CO2 emissions. Unplanned, excess mileage is flushed out to reveal how fuel and CO2 can both be reduced.'

Paragon has added a new system called Carbon Minimiser to its routing and scheduling software. It helps users look at route efficiency in terms of fuel used and associated carbon emissions. 'The Carbon Minimiser estimates the carbon content of the calculated routes and schedules, and then provides an additional optimisation step to reduce it further,' explains Salter.

'This new functionality enables transport operators to look at the environmental impact of their vehicle routes and schedules as part of the route planning process. And since CO2 emissions are directly proportional to fuel used, reducing emissions goes hand in hand with reducing fuel costs.'

The Carbon Minimiser is used as a final optimisation step to adjust the schedules, changing call sequences and swapping calls between routes to reduce the total CO2 and fuel figures further. It takes account of the fact that slower urban journeys incur more fuel/CO2 per mile than faster motorway journeys. Similarly, heavily-loaded vehicles use more fuel/CO2 per mile than empty ones.

The system takes these factors into account to generate carbon-friendly schedules. It can also be used to analyse distribution scenarios, so operators can make location decisions based on expected carbon footprint, as well as cost criteria. Carbon KPIs can be expressed in expected CO2 per drop or per tonne.

'Fuel consumption also depends on other factors such as driving style, vehicle age, weather conditions and so on,' accepts Richard Street, Paragon's software development director. 'Regardless of these, vehicles will use more fuel per mile if they are heavily laden or travelling at slow speeds, so by taking account of the two key factors of weight and speed, Carbon Minimiser is able to generate fuel-efficient and carbon-friendly routes and schedules.'

Load consolidation

The drive to reduce empty running means that load consolidation and shared-user distribution are back in fashion. According to Dean Woolliscroft of software house Haultech: 'Operators using our traffic management system are reporting that some of their customers are now requesting carbon emission reports for the loads they are sending.

'Currently it is mainly public-sector bodies and companies with a high public profile who are interested in this consignment-by-consignment data, but we think over the next few years the same attitude will percolate throughout the sector.'

Woolliscroft says that some of its haulier customers are being proactive, and are suggesting that customers consolidate loads and reduce delivery frequency. 'The haulier wins, customers win through reduced costs, and the environment wins through reduced emissions.'

Haultech's Carbon Calculator takes into account route mileage and load allocation and then reports on the amount of CO2 the vehicle will generate during the delivery. 'The traffic management system allows consignees to book loads online and get an instant calculation of carbon footprint for that delivery. Traffic planners can view the CO2 emissions for the entire vehicle, along with the financial data for the journey.

BOX: Tesco's home shopping fleet reaps the green dividend

Reductions in fuel consumption and improvements in driver performance are among the 'green' gains being reaped by Tesco following a decision by the company to install parts of the Microlise Fleet and Distribution portfolio in its 2,000 Tesco.com home delivery vehicles (reported in brief in the last issue).

Rising fuel prices are a growing concern for the online arm of the supermarket giant, which estimates that its fuel bill will reach 'significantly more' than £10 million in 2008. Tesco is hoping for a return on its investment in the multi-million pound GPS-based management project within 12 months, by slashing its fuel spend by between 10 and 12 per cent.

'As Tesco's online business grew, effort was concentrated in areas such as driver recruitment,' says Tesco.com fleet manager Dino Papas. 'But fuel management was not an area it had examined closely, as price was not such an issue.

'It became clear that we had to do something significantly better to manage fuel consumption, but if the savings were not deliverable I doubt the project would have gone ahead.'

Each vehicle is being fitted with the latest Microlise GPS/GPRS-based on-board unit, which provides tracking information and also feeds back data on vehicle and driver status and performance. The vehicle-specific information is derived from the vehicle's CANbus communication spine.

The tracking computer connects to Tesco.com's data network, reporting information such as mileage, fuel flow, speed and engine revs in real time. The data enables the firm to assess vehicle activity against delivery schedule as well as driving style and economy.

'We had to scale back on some of the things we first intended to do,' Papas says, 'such as monitoring oil levels and vehicle performance. We preferred to focus on key features relating to fuel consumption first.'

Armed with the new data, Tesco can produce reports to assess fuel economy as well as safe driving measures. The roll-out to Tesco.com's 2,000-strong UK delivery fleet was due for completion before the end of the summer.