Cab Trucking Fuel Management Project

CAB Trucking Fuel Management and Consumption Project

CAB Trucking Fuel Management and Consumption Project

Background and Need Statement

Over the course of the last 15 months there has been a rapid rise in the cost of fuel. This rapid rise has had a negative impact on our bottom line and happened at a pace that made it hard for us to pass on these costs to our customers. The current industry standard for determining fuel surcharges depends on the U.S. Energy Department’s On-Highway Diesel price, which tends to run two months behind. This does not allow us to raise our fuel surcharge to reflect current pricing at the pumps.

The trucking industry as a whole has begun to look more closely at ways to improve fuel consumption rates. Initial steps taken by the trucking industry as a whole have included a no left turn policy and have asked drivers to reduce their speeds from an average of 65mph to 60mph. Furthermore, the trucking industry has also begun looking at vehicle maintenance, routing, and driver performance to find ways to improve fuel use efficiencies.

As we have a mixture of routes and non-routes available, we have additional challenges that will need to be looked at apart from those being considered by the trucking industry as a whole. We have embraced technology before in our efforts to be a green company. To reduce the amount of paperwork and improve the process of recording shipments we have used electronic hand pads. Looking to technology, we hope we will find the solution to help us out in this very important matter as well. We want to look at several ways to improve our use of our available fuel.

One important aspect of the project will focus on placing GPS units in all our vehicles and we want them to be able to transmit information about the vehicle location, engine performance and fuel consumption rates. This information will be recorded live and collected at the end of the day at our fueling stations, becoming instantly available to be accessed by our mechanics. The information will be stored and available for analysis by operations and maintenance.

Furthermore, the data that is collected will also be available for use in determining if a driver needs additional training to become a more efficient driver. For route management, the GPS units can used to monitor the route the driver uses and to make adjustments based on stop add/drops, construction and seasonal conditions. The vehicles performance will also be monitored and the information will be used to make adjustments that will get the best fuel usage for the way the driver uses their assigned vehicle.

The mpg rating will be posted at each of our terminals and a peer-based competition will be developed to help keep mpg high and get additional ideas for getting better fuel consumption rates. This project has a short time frame because of the rapidly rising cost of fuel. We are looking at a phased companywide rollout and we should try to use as much off the shelf material as possible. We can make modifications as needed to ensure that everything flows smoothly from truck to database to end-users.

Project Objectives

CAB Trucking has submitted a request to manage current fuel consumption. Rising fuel prices and increased business are essentially providing added costs that require immediate action. The desired objective is to implement a software and incentive program within the next 90 days that will provide better route management and lower fuel consumption for a projected savings of $1,500 per vehicle per year.

The new software program will work with current Windows and Linux operating systems and also the current Bluetooth handhelds to provide project cost savings. The projected cost is $500 per vehicle for the software upgrade gps unit installs. The onsite fuel lanes may also require a blue tooth device at an additional $1500.

For the system to work efficiently the managers must be able to locate any driver, real-time from their local terminals. Management should also be able to make changes real-time to any route. The software program will not only record routes taken, but also suggest the shortest routes for best fuel consumption. Fuel consumption will be monitored and used for reporting and measuring purposes.

The Project Manager, programmers, and business managers, including the department managers, will manage risks involved. Should handhelds not respond with new software, new handhelds can be purchased at an additional cost of $600, or an off-the-shelf program can be purchased. Software will be installed during non-production hours to minimize downtime.

Mission and Goals of Project

CAB Trucking mission is to create a fuel and route management system, which will be cost effective, and user friendly. The goals of this mission are to create a program and a database, which can be integrated into CAB Trucking current system. This program will work with Windows and Linux operating systems and the database system will assist CAB Trucking tracking and recording system. A new network infrastructure will also be in place to gather information from each housing terminal. Each housing terminal will have a user-friendly front-end system in place. These systems will have full-featured reporting capabilities in which the data will be represented both numerically and with geographical features. With this new infrastructure; Bluetooth, Global Positioning Units, and cell phones will track and record data for the company. The data will be input and transmitted from the devices, which includes suggested routes, tracking routes, and current miles per gallon being used. This information will be tracked and recorded into the central database, which will then update each housing terminal.

Project Approach

Utilizing a top-down approach, the project will be broken down into three sub-systems of the overall project. The first sub-system will consist of the fuel and route management system. These two processes will be together since they both will utilize the GPS system in-truck linked back to the computers at the local terminals via the Bluetooth system. The next sub-system would be the network infrastructure that needs to be created to run all of these processes over the network to be accessible from any of the networked computers. The third sub-system is the Bluetooth processes. This is going to have the information on the mpg updating live from the GPS to a cellular phone and then transfer over to the main database.

The processes of the fuel and route management system will include fuel consumption tracking