How Charity Fleetcare are Helping Charity Retailers Reduce Fuel Costs by up to 15%

The Solution – Charity Fleetcare’s Connected Technology

The Charity Fleetcare connected solution ticked so many boxes.

The drivers cover approx 12,000 miles per week collecting donations from donors and clothing banks, as well as delivering goods sold in The Air Ambulance stores. Vehicles operate mainly across the East Midlands but also include frequent journeys to other areas, such as London.

Introduced as an improvement tool, the installation of Telematics Link and Pro driver screen alongside the Charity Fleetcare connected software brought immediate benefits. The Connected vehicle platform provided the ability to monitor a wide range of KPIs, including speeding incidents, idling, arrival and departure times and real time planning, but also give the driver live traffic information and instant driver feedback and coaching.

The driver OptiDrive score gives immediate feedback to the driver on how they are driving and can be reported on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. In making use of the OptiDrive facility, which monitors driver behaviour, recording incidents such as fuel economy, speeding, harsh braking and idling, the results were immediate. Drivers speed awareness increased almost overnight, drivers quickly realised the benefits for them, as well as for the charity. The driver OptiDrive score also gives immediate feedback to the driver in the cab on how they are driving.

Many of the journeys are undertaken in variable weather conditions with drivers using their vans to warm up whilst on collections or deliveries. Increased knowledge of fuel consumption and a charity-wide initiative to reduce carbon consumption focused drivers to reduce their idling time to minimum.

Over a 12 month period the average OptiDrive scores went from 7.6 to 8.5. Fuel cost savings of 15% were achieved and fuel consumption improved from 29.1mpg to 33.3mpg, while speeding incidents were reduced from 1% of driving time to 0.1% of driving time.

Drivers use an app on their Pro device screen to conduct a daily digital vehicle check which is automatically sent back to the dashboard to ensure compliance, alleviating the administrative burden / paperwork process.

Timely Management Information and Real-time Route Planning

As a management information tool, the ease of use of the analytics and the ability to drill down and compare one vehicle team’s workload to another’s, really helps to define what is going on. It provides factual information from an HR perspective also, allowing The Air Ambulance to address issues as they arise.

The responsive nature of the Charity means that the ability to route plan in real time is a major bonus. Being able to plan changes hour by hour and the ability to check where a particular driver is located has really helped to streamline the planning process and improve on the donor and customer experience.