Controlling costs is an essential part of managing any construction company or other business. One expense that everyone who uses construction machinery is all too familiar with—but one that’s often largely overlooked in cost-control planning—is gasoline and diesel overhead.
By following these tips to reduce heavy equipment fuel costs, you can help prevent this expense from unnecessarily eating into company profits. And, of course, the larger and busier your fleet, the more you can save by being proactive in this regard.
How to Save on Construction Machinery Fuel Costs
- Use heavy equipment with an advanced telematics system that allows you to monitor fuel consumption, operational hours, driving habits, machine idling, maintenance alerts, and other factors that affect overall fuel usage and costs
- Monitor fuel use closely with the telematics system to identify high and excessive consumption; check out the state of these machines, how they’re being operated, and whether they’re the right equipment for their applications
- Select the right heavy equipment for every job; machines that are inadequate for an application don’t operate at peak fuel efficiency, and machines that are overkill for the task are wasteful
- Plan out the most efficient routes for machines to drive
- Think through heavy equipment positions and material staging areas during job planning to avoid unnecessary transport
- Reduce idling as much as possible by paying attention to idle reports from your telematics system and instructing crews to minimize idle time; establish an idle policy
- Maintain proper tire pressure to help optimize fuel efficiency
- Train machine operators to drive efficiently and avoid aggressive driving (like speeding, rapid acceleration, and sharp braking) that increases fuel consumption
- Keep all heavy equipment up to date on scheduled maintenance
