When accelerating away from traffic lights, roundabouts etc use cruise control resume, not the throttle pedal. You’ll need to use the throttle to get you up to 20MPH before cruise control will work on most trucks. Take it out of eco mode if it’s got one and make sure you don’t use more than 75% throttle then once you’ve hit 20MPH use that CC Resume. If you’ve not yet set CC then just use the +/increase speed button to accelerate up to speed.
Over-run. Whenever you come to any downhill stretch disengage cruise control, don’t use the pedals, let momentum take you down the hill. A 1.0 score only requires just 0.3% of your journey to be on over-run. Coming down from the top of the A66 fully loaded heading eastbound once you passed the county border you can do a whole 16k on over-run with just 2k on drive where the small climb is near the gravel quarry. Westbound you can get from the top of the A66 down to where it goes to single carriageway at Warcop bends, about 5km. Similar story on Windy Hill on the M62 etc.
Harsh braking is literally when you’re trying to beat the lights and bottle it at the last minute and slam all on. I’ve had braking I thought would be harsh braking which hasn’t been. Back off earlier, use engine braking.
When accelerating away from traffic lights, roundabouts etc use cruise control resume, not the throttle pedal. You’ll need to use the throttle to get you up to 20MPH before cruise control will work on most trucks. Take it out of eco mode if it’s got one and make sure you don’t use more than 75% throttle then once you’ve hit 20MPH use that CC Resume. If you’ve not yet set CC then just use the +/increase speed button to accelerate up to speed.
Over-run. Whenever you come to any downhill stretch disengage cruise control, don’t use the pedals, let momentum take you down the hill. A 1.0 score only requires just 0.3% of your journey to be on over-run. Coming down from the top of the A66 fully loaded heading eastbound once you passed the county border you can do a whole 16k on over-run with just 2k on drive where the small climb is near the gravel quarry. Westbound you can get from the top of the A66 down to where it goes to single carriageway at Warcop bends, about 5km. Similar story on Windy Hill on the M62 etc.
Harsh braking is literally when you’re trying to beat the lights and bottle it at the last minute and slam all on. I’ve had braking I thought would be harsh braking which hasn’t been. Back off earlier, use engine braking.
When accelerating away from traffic lights, roundabouts etc use cruise control resume, not the throttle pedal. You’ll need to use the throttle to get you up to 20MPH before cruise control will work on most trucks. Take it out of eco mode if it’s got one and make sure you don’t use more than 75% throttle then once you’ve hit 20MPH use that CC Resume. If you’ve not yet set CC then just use the +/increase speed button to accelerate up to speed.
Over-run. Whenever you come to any downhill stretch disengage cruise control, don’t use the pedals, let momentum take you down the hill. A 1.0 score only requires just 0.3% of your journey to be on over-run. Coming down from the top of the A66 fully loaded heading eastbound once you passed the county border you can do a whole 16k on over-run with just 2k on drive where the small climb is near the gravel quarry. Westbound you can get from the top of the A66 down to where it goes to single carriageway at Warcop bends, about 5km. Similar story on Windy Hill on the M62 etc.
Harsh braking is literally when you’re trying to beat the lights and bottle it at the last minute and slam all on. I’ve had braking I thought would be harsh braking which hasn’t been. Back off earlier, use engine braking.
It all depends what the parameters are set at as to how to get a 1.0 score by the company concerned.
Combined coasting on ours is >0.7% of the time.
<95% acceleration less than 1% of the time.
Cruise control without accelerator input >50%
Engine idle <1%
Green band driving >81%
Harsh braking less than 1 harsh break in every 7 days of ■■■■■■■■■■ driving. A harsh brake is usually set at >9kmh decrease in speed over 3 secs.
Overspeed <0.0% of the time.
On nights it is pretty easy to get all A’s without trying too hard, days it can be harder and runs can also have an effect, longer journeys getting a good score is easy, shorter and more stop start journeys again it’s harder to get a good score.
It is not a fool proof scheme as many have pointed out. But it’s their train set as always.
End of the day, look in front of you, use retarder to slow it down, leave plenty of room, dont chase the lights, accelerate and decelerate smoothly, switch engine off when sitting for a period of time, think fuel savings.
Surely this is what any professional driver is already doing?
Fuzrat:
End of the day, look in front of you, use retarder to slow it down, leave plenty of room, dont chase the lights, accelerate and decelerate smoothly, switch engine off when sitting for a period of time, think fuel savings.
Surely this is what any professional driver is already doing?
Exactly this…and what most of us have been doing for ■■■■ years without the aid of a gizmo or instructions from a clown who has never even sat in a truck.
But you know what it’s like these days soon there will be a display in your cab saying ‘‘Breathe… in out, in out’’ and when you stop at services for toilet a one saying ‘‘Wipe arse when done’’,…and this is how the job is getting, inept incompetents in offices behind a computer, instructing brainwashed robots with licences.
And, to be fair most of the outfits that use the microlise are the ones that have absolutely bags of time, Supermarkets etc mostly so no need to be going like your ■■■ is on fire.
Got a 9hr shift later, Didcot to Woking and back, Microlise score will be through the roof and my blood pressure through the floor running around at 52 on the cruise
cooper1203:
I have been sent my microlise report for the last 2 weeks and some scores are good and some are dreadfull but i dont understand the headings in some case or in other cases i dont understand what i can do to improve
the 5 areas are accel > 95%, combined coasting, engine idle, harsh braking and overspeed. The areas i need to improve on are acceleration engine idle and harsh braking.
acceleration: what does this heading mean? I tend to use cruise control on the major roads / motorways and if i have to slow down or brake due to down hills etc i always use resume rather than accelerate up to speed then reset the cruise control. I do tend to use the throttle around urban areas. However, i remember reading on here not to use more than 50% of the throttles travel and try not to. I tend to set the cruise control to the maximum amount which in this case is 53 whilst on roads that allow this.
Engine idle: I have no clue how to improve this as i dont do anything different than i do in the other trucks and everyone else says my idle time is good. When picking up or dropping a trailor i always turn the engine off when not needed. the only time the engine is running once im in position is when i am either raising or lowering the unit susspention or moving back to pick up the pin once i have the airlines on / tug test. Only other time is building air pressure.
harsh braking: How is this calculated? Is it a factor of speed reduction over distance/ time. how do they differenciate between avoiding an accident and being careless? Does the abs sensor come into play here? If the abs sensor is a factor then i have an issue as its always causing me issues when i am reversing or spining round in the yard. If not i dont realy understand how i can improve as i try to use the (bloody usless) retarder when comeing up to a rounderbout etc from over 1/2 a mile out by the time im at the 300 yard mark i might of dropped 5-6 mph with the retarder on full and the tachometer well into the yellow ( the truck wont drop any more gears just beeps at me)
sorry for the long winded post but this is begining to get on my nerves as its obviously an issue with the company but cant get a sensible answer out of them.
what the bloody hell is this industry heading to? MICROLISE what a pile of tosh… turn the engine on do your days work at the end of shift turn the engine off that’s how i drive trucks end of story
But what control over the engine does the driver have now. Here in the US we’re years behind you with regards to truck technology but even here the driver doesn’t have any direct control of the engine. When he/she mashes down on the accelerator it sends a signal to the computer and it will decide how much fuel to pump into the cylinders and now we’re getting automatic gearboxes that’s another thing the driver doesn’t have to do. Also they shut down after 3 minutes of idle so no more excessive idle time.
remy:
But what control over the engine does the driver have now. Here in the US we’re years behind you with regards to truck technology but even here the driver doesn’t have any direct control of the engine. When he/she mashes down on the accelerator it sends a signal to the computer and it will decide how much fuel to pump into the cylinders and now we’re getting automatic gearboxes that’s another thing the driver doesn’t have to do. Also they shut down after 3 minutes of idle so no more excessive idle time.
The driver still controls how hard they press the pedal which tells the ECU how much it has been pressed which then sets how much “throttle” the ECU applies to the engine. It’s not binary, all or nothing.
We managed to get that removed when it was pointed out that they were automatic gearboxes and the truck’s computer decided when to make the gearchange and also that when using engine braking/jake brake/retarder the gearbox dropped 2,3 gears to put the engine near the redline because that’s where the most engine braking is produced. So for example when coming down Windy Hill the DAFs we drive, because they’ve got hill descent speed control, will drop down to 10th and sit about 2000-2100 RPM.
We managed to get that removed when it was pointed out that they were automatic gearboxes and the truck’s computer decided when to make the gearchange and also that when using engine braking/jake brake/retarder the gearbox dropped 2,3 gears to put the engine near the redline because that’s where the most engine braking is produced. So for example when coming down Windy Hill the DAFs we drive, because they’ve got hill descent speed control, will drop down to 10th and sit about 2000-2100 RPM.
But the Telematics kit can see when the exhaust brake is in use and excludes that from the count of over-revving and green band driving calculations.
And even in full-auto mode, the driver still has a big input into the shift points by simply not pressing so hard on the loud pedal.
When accelerating away from traffic lights, roundabouts etc use cruise control resume, not the throttle pedal. You’ll need to use the throttle to get you up to 20MPH before cruise control will work on most trucks…
It’s 10mph on a merc, 15 mph on a scania and that’s just two off the top of my head, so to say most trucks are 20mph is nonsense off the bat. DAFS are.
If you were to use cruise control resume on the new gen Scania when empty or light you would not only get a harsh acceleration (or whatever its called) you would very quickly wear out your tyres. It is fabulous fun though.
We managed to get that removed when it was pointed out that they were automatic gearboxes and the truck’s computer decided when to make the gearchange and also that when using engine braking/jake brake/retarder the gearbox dropped 2,3 gears to put the engine near the redline because that’s where the most engine braking is produced. So for example when coming down Windy Hill the DAFs we drive, because they’ve got hill descent speed control, will drop down to 10th and sit about 2000-2100 RPM.
Using exhaust brake all the time on all hills and over 81% over 5400 ish miles for that quarter is easy as pie certainly on nights. I do use hills on motorways and let it roll and back it off as it’s gets towards 60mph with the exhaust brake as well as rolling up to junctions and roundabouts as well.
That’s driving the Renault’s that have a much smaller green band than the Daf’s as well.
So that you don’t lose your job■■?
Or alternatively, so that you earn the £1,000 bonus■■?
Or leave the job and get a job with a firm that doesn’t work for slashed rates so they don’t need to bother about rubbish like this and pay a decent wage without fuel bonus.
So that you don’t lose your job■■?
Or alternatively, so that you earn the £1,000 bonus■■?
Or leave the job and get a job with a firm that doesn’t work for slashed rates so they don’t need to bother about rubbish like this and pay a decent wage without fuel bonus.
Not all are like that. My job is own account, sensible amounts of hours, great pay and great terms and conditions.i couldn’t even tell you what my score is, its fitted to the vehicles and all we’re told is if there’s an issue about something they’ll tell us about it.
All I’ve ever done is drive how I normally drive, albeit it slightly slower because I’ve no need to bust my balls and go flat out anywhere at any time unlike my last firm who spent all day trying to get two days work out of everyone.
I’ve seen places with leaderboards and who pull people up for this and that, but just the presence of these systems doesn’t automatically mean that every form has some militant approach to policing it.
Had a bollocking the other week about my score. Now I have just had a phone call why I am taking longer to do jobs. My score has gone down. I pointed out I am driving like Richard Bucket as told by management.
soon there will be a display in your cab saying ‘‘Breathe… in out, in out’’ and when you stop at services for toilet a one saying ‘‘Wipe arse when done’’,…and this is how the job is getting, inept incompetents in offices behind a computer, instructing brainwashed robots with licences. 
