i was looking at the latest fuel figures,posted on our notice board today…and noticed the bloke who thrashes about everywhere(always has to be first),is currently 2.75 mpg worse than the most efficient driver on that particular class of vehicle.
so…if he does an extra load per week,how would it stack up(with regards profitabity) against the bloke who gets 2.75 more miles to the gallon,over the the five years that particular lorry will be in our service?
It won’t unless that extra load is a very short run that pays an absolute fortune 
so the bloke with the best mpg wins 
Every time, fuel is such a huge cost nowadays, every penny saved goes directly to the bottom line, whereas every extra penny earned has to be shared between all the various expenses it takes to get a lorry down the road
Hi commonrail - I think more actual figures are needed to produce an answer here.
Need to know… (1) the cargo profit on each run.
(2) mileage per run (to calculate,must be equal runs per day)
(3) the actual amount of fuel used by EITHER the good or bad driver over five days (runs)
(4) the litre/gallon price of the fuel
(5) the driver pay rate
The projected vehicle repair/service costs over the 5yr lifetime are also a consideration. (presumably, mr leadfoot will be more of a liability regarding this)
without these figures, impossible to calculate. Once this sum has been arrived at, the extra run can easily be factored in.
P.S. just thought of another - how many weeks worked in a year? 50 would obviously make it easier to work out!
P.P.S. what about leap years? (only joking, quite simple really)
A cracking good question that is way,way beyond my academic abilities - well done, sir!!
My sort of (academic) question; we are talking overall productivity here and here’s my quick amateur take on it, bearing in mind I tend to favour MPG over MPH so may be biased here.
What are the percentages involved or to put it another way, what are the actual fuel figures achieved? e.g. 8 MPG versus 10.75 MPG (perhaps not beyond the realms of possibility) means about a third better mileage is achieved. This would mean 86 miles would cost the racer £64.50 (@ £6 per gallon) or the economical driver £48. So, I reckon the faster guy might take, say, 1 hour 45 minutes perhaps to cover this distance (@ 49 MPH average) versus 2 hours for a slower person (about 14% slower), meaning that about £8 an hour might be saved on fuel costs, hardly premiership wages, but not to be sniffed at if, as you say, this is extrapolated, because £8 X 40 hours X 50 weeks = £16000 per annum. Not sure what 15 minutes of a driver’s time is but if it’s more than about £15 then it’s better economically to not be economical with the fuel, if you know what I mean.
Thus, over a 56 hour’s worth of driving in one week, £448 in fuel might be saved but 14% less distance/ more wages/ less customer satisfaction etc. would be the cost incurred, which would have to be factored in. In other words, if that 1 extra load is going to generate around £500 minimum profit, then it would be better to go faster.
I think.
I stand to be corrected and welcome any input (i.e. check my workings please).
I would say being fuel efficient is the best way of making/saving money. That said there is a lad at our place going that slow he is pushing his luck, and suppliers are complaining as his deliveries are always late, it’s not entirely his fault, the warehouse can hardly ever get the loads done on time but everyone else will do their bit to try and claw some time back.
when i said he does 1 load extra per week,i was just over simplifying things to try and get my point across.
if theres 3 or 4 of us going to the same place..hell be the first one back…and probably an hour down the road on his second job,whereas i might go home and start from the yard the next day.
likewise,if were on a night out..hell have to get one truckstop further than anyone else.
he pushes to the max…so over a period of time,his truck is obviously going to gross more than mine…and i just wondered if all his efforts were being undone by poor fuel figures.
To me this is an intriguing little conundrum of efficiency. He probably gets a little more done at a fair bit higher cost overall, so you’d be right to wonder if his overall productivity is not too hot. You need to be in full possession of the facts. You’ve got the proof of his fuel consumption. How much extra mileage does he achieve in a week? Divide the total by his consumption and multiply by the average cost of your fuel (all in imperial measurements for us traditionalists) and you should see how less profitable this geezer is (or perhaps just how much more expensive he is, just based on fuel usage), e.g. if he covers 2000 miles per week @ 8 MPG = £1500 ( as per my previous post on this matter) whereas e.g. 1800 miles @ 10.75 MPG = £1004 (all totally arbitrary I know), i.e. about £125000 saved over 5 years! A bit of a cheat there because an extra 50000 miles of transporting with its associated costs would have to be made up from somewhere (costs £28000 in fuel alone). How much less is transported by the most economical driver? Surely worth it to drive more economically overall though. Proving all this to the boss when all he might see is the bottom line of work achieved is a different matter, though it seems that these facts should readily be acknowledged. Remember these are not at all true figures but I hope they are fairly representative.
Speaking as a self confessed lead foot. It’s probably a case of one cancelling out the other when EVERY variable is considered.
I seldom concern myself with MPG figures as mine are pretty much in line with the other drivers yer.
All of the above would only work if the vehicles were all working 24/7/365 and being paid for every minute they were rolling along empty roads with no interruptions.
Otherwise variables come into the equation, it’s all well and good tear arseing around, but is it productive?
Does the extra speed equal extra revenue and does that extra revenue bring enough extra profit to counteract the extra cost involved in getting it.
99 times out of 100 the answer will be no. Possible exceptions are jobs like short local shunts where getting a move on would mean getting an extra load done in a day’s work, however the extra load would, as I’ve said, need to earn enough to pay for the extra fuel and wear and tear on the equipment and still return a profit.
Remembering that less profit will be made from the first loads due to those increased costs, so it’s not just that extra load that has to be figured into the figures.
1 MPG on an 8 wheel tarmac type contract tipper over a year is iro £6000 saved
it wont matter how you look at it, you wont have the time to do the amount of loads required to make £6000 profit by driving flat out all the time, also the wear and tear will be higher
the thing that matters is how much it costs to make the money not who earns the most!
moose
I managed 11.5mpg with my 8wheeler on Wednesday and was at 10.5 on Thursday. I think for a tipper that’s pretty good. The thing to consider is our tippers are on day rates not tonnage and loads.
Fuel comparisons are not alway so clear cut.
In the OP’s company, are all the drivers doing the same weight with indentical outfits to similar destinations over similar terrain and road layout with similar number of drops…indeed at the same times of day?
The bloke doing multi drop or on poor roads/hills and countless junctions/roundabouts with heavy traffic to contend with might expect to get around 7mpg at best.
The same bloke doing motorway trunking on fairly flat roads might well get 10mpg, especially if lighter weights involved.
My loads are all one hit and fuel up on return, one hard run with terrain/traffic and junction combination against you will see 6.5 mpg, with a best of 7.
A motorway run without too many hard hills will see 9.0 to 9.8ish, less if i need to run at full speed…all outgoing loads will average just over 43t gross, 15t empty.
(my figures will include fast tickover for an hour or more at delivery to drive the blower)
I have tried three times to post in this thread and it keeps losing them…I bet this one b…y well works !!! 
matamoros:
I have tried three times to post in this thread and it keeps losing them…I bet this one b…y well works !!!
Classic lol
commonrail:
i was looking at the latest fuel figures,posted on our notice board today…and noticed the bloke who thrashes about everywhere(always has to be first),is currently 2.75 mpg worse than the most efficient driver on that particular class of vehicle.
so…if he does an extra load per week,how would it stack up(with regards profitabity) against the bloke who gets 2.75 more miles to the gallon,over the the five years that particular lorry will be in our service?
An extra load a week with the hours he’ll save over someone not ragging it probably won’t even be enough for anything much more than a local. But lets be generous and say it will generate around £5000 additional profit.
Assuming an average of 70,000 miles a year:
Economical driver doing 10MPG will use 7,000 gallons, uneconomical driver does 2.75MPG less at 7.25MPG, 9655 gallons, a difference of 2,665 gallons. (it’ll be 2,665 gallons difference as long as the difference between the two drivers is 2.75MPG regardless of the lower or upper MPG figures)
Assuming that fuel costs the company £5 a gallon (as they reclaim VAT), the uneconomical driver is costing them £13,325 a year more or in fuel although it’ll be more from the additional wear on brakes and tyres. There is no way the profit from an extra run in the hours he’ll save will make that up.
£13,325 a year or £66,625 over the 5 years you keep a wagon in service is enough to almost pay for a new wagon, especially if you count the additional cost of tyres, brakes and repairs his wagon will have.
Anecdotal story:
I used to do a night trunk from Hull to London with a guy whilst on a TNT contract. We were both in the same wagon, some nights using the wagon the other had used the night before, with the same type of load going to the same place taking the same route setting off at the same time.
He drove like his arse was on fire, I drove economically. I arrived at the drop just after he’d driven through the gates. On the return journey I arrived at the pumps whilst he was still filling up.
He was literally saving a few minutes over 250 miles but whereas I was going through 200 litres of fuel a night he was going through 240-250. It effectively meant that compared to him, the Friday night cost the company nothing to send me other than wages.
commonrail:
i was looking at the latest fuel figures,posted on our notice board today…and noticed the bloke who thrashes about everywhere(always has to be first),is currently 2.75 mpg worse than the most efficient driver on that particular class of vehicle.
so…if he does an extra load per week,how would it stack up(with regards profitabity) against the bloke who gets 2.75 more miles to the gallon,over the the five years that particular lorry will be in our service?
cant be me I was third on the list
steve
Snudger:
How much less is transported by the most economical driver?
Not much less. When I did an economical driving course, in order to pass not only had you to increase your fuel economy but you had to decrease the time it took you to do the test route.
Sounds impossible? Who will get from one side of the roundabout to the other quicker:
A) Rush around Rob who goes storming up to the roundabout, slams all on for the stop line then waits for cars to go and sets off from standstill or,
B) Economical Ed who lets off the gas early approaching the roundabout under engine braking using zero fuel timing it so that when he gets to the roundabout he doesn’t need to stop?
In fact if you drive economically properly it should cost you next to no time. In my anecdote it cost me a couple of minutes over a 250 mile run.
Juddian:
A motorway run without too many hard hills will see 9.0 to 9.8ish, less if i need to run at full speed…all outgoing loads will average just over 43t gross, 15t empty.
(my figures will include fast tickover for an hour or more at delivery to drive the blower)
You need to learn how to drive.
Doing that kind of run I was seeing 11MPG in a Scania R420 running at 44 tonnes loaded, 16 tonnes empty from Hull to Bristol and back so hardly devoid of hills. That included 1-2hrs of the engine on fast idle running the PTO for the pump at the drop.