Most businesses based on road transport are highly competitive and the winners will be those that have a clear understanding of their day to day operational costs. As they say – if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.
Measuring vehicle fuel consumption is fairly straight forward. Traditionally expressed as miles per gallon or if you prefer miles per litre, it’s a calculated figure based on how much fuel was put into the vehicle and the distance it has travelled.
The benchmarks are clear – so any sudden drop in performance should ring alarm bells immediately. Given that fuel quality is constant the only variables and potential anomalies (apart from criminal activity) are dependent on the condition of the vehicle and the way in which it is being driven. Factors such as engine performance, correct tyre pressures, excessive idling and driving style will all have some impact on the vehicle’s fuel consumption.
Data capture
For fleet operators that have installed depot facilities, there are four fundamental pieces of information that can be captured as vehicles are being fuelled; the actual vehicle, the person fuelling, current odometer reading and the amount drawn.
Fuel management systems such as Merridale require this information to authenticate the transaction.
There are various methods to identify the vehicle. data tags are the most common. These are assigned to individual vehicles and are usually carried with the vehicle ignition keys. As an alternative to data tags Merridale can also support agency cards, data keys or by using the keyboard to enter the vehicle details. (registration or fleet number). Alternatively a fixed ID tag attached to the vehicle (vLink) can be read from the fuelling point by using a robust Merridale vLink cabled reader. Of late this has proved to be an extremely popular and reliable choice in that it prevents all the potential swapping and loss of hand held options.
For driver identification and as an additional security factor, the vehicle driver can also be identified by entering a PIN or by means of a driver held data tag or card swipe. Some fleet operators require this function to compare the economy performance for individual drivers who are assigned to different vehicles.
Distance travelled since the vehicle was fuelled previously is based on the odometer reading. This can be entered either manually via the pump keyboard, or obtained electronically by using the Merridale vehicle mounted wireless transducer. Since the quality of the reports depends on the integrity of this input Merridale system can be set up to validate the odometer reading. To do this the new input is checked against the mileage entered for the previous fuelling transaction using Merridale iProve verification technique.
New developments include the integration of the Merridale system with odometer or distance travelled data obtained directly from telematics and tracking company servers automatically.
The final part of the equation, the fuel drawn and date are recorded automatically by the Merridale system on completion of the fuelling transaction.
One major advantage over other devices is that by measuring the quantity of fuel that has actually been delivered to the vehicle fuel tanks the Fleet operator will have better quality and more consistent statistics to work with than by using various other means of calculating fuel usage.
Management Control Having captured the data the basic purpose of the Fuel Management system is to present this to the company managers in an appropriate format. The data can be processed according to different requirements. Cost accounting needs to be accurate but not necessarily urgent. On the other hand a more serious situation highlighting possible malpractice needs to be processed urgently and within a restricted distribution.
The Merridale FuelWorks web-based reporting service can be set up to provide a management dash board with real time data feeds showing the current status of one or multiple fuelling points. In general the information is organised to suit the user requirements. It can be consolidated as summary reports available either on demand or scheduled to be delivered on a daily/weekly/monthly basis. As a web service the information can be accessed from any web browser as and whenever it is required.
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With Merridale’s own range now available, as well as still supplying Gilbarco with fuel management units, the marketplace had the choice of buying either a complete Merridale built package or a Gilbarco built version of the same management system. However, over the decades that followed, Merridale enhanced its product range by introducing true twin units, […]
