The Fuel Economy Advisers Scheme is funded as part of the Road Haulage Modernisation Fund. It provides the haulage industry with high quality advice on saving fuel.

Our programme consists of running a large number of Seminars and Site Visits.

There are four types of Seminars being run:
1. General Fuel Economy
2. Fuel Monitoring
3. Driver Development
4. Aerodynamics

In order to be able to attend a Specialist Seminar you must first attend a General Seminar. These Seminars are generally held at a time and place to suit you.

If you have five or more people from your company who should attend we can hold the Seminar at your premises, otherwise they are generally held at a local hotel.

The Seminars last up to one hour; there is ample time during and afterwards for questions and discussions.

1. GENERAL FUEL ECONOMY
Covers the most important aspects of fuel saving in the haulage industry.

It covers:
• Fuel monitoring
• Fuel Champions
• Effective analysis
• Success rates
• Routing and scheduling
• Aerodynamics
• Driver Development
• Vehicle specification

The Seminar is designed to tell you why you need to save fuel and how you should go about it. We will show you where or how you can make the biggest savings and illustrate them with real life examples from other companies. We will also tell you where you should start in order to save fuel.

Discussions can focus on your particular problems if you wish and by the end you should feel that you could put some of the ideas into practice.

2. FUEL MONITORING
This is the first of the Specialist Seminars. Until you are confident that you are monitoring fuel usage properly and accurately it will be difficult, if not impossible, for you to determine where your fuel is going and whether you are saving fuel through the measures that you wish to implement.

It will cover:
• Fuel champions
• Recording fuel used
• Monitoring
• Calculating Fuel Consumption
• Common errors
• Periodic Effects
• Seasonal Effects
• Key Performance Indicators

3. DRIVER DEVELOPMENT
The impact of driver behaviour on your fuel costs is large. Once a driver is allocated to a vehicle, their ability to drive efficiently can mean the difference between profit and loss on that vehicle. As well as savings in fuel costs, driving efficiently has knock-on benefits with regard to maintenance costs, accident rates and therefore insurance costs.

A 10% improvement in fuel consumption for a vehicle can often double its profitability while a 10% worsening can wipe out the profit completely.

The briefing will cover the following topics:
• Case Studies
• Use of gears
• The traffic light test
• Anticipation
• League tables
• The Green Band - what it is and how to use it

4. AERODYNAMICS
Good aerodynamics do not just save fuel on vehicles used on motorways, they start saving fuel before you leave towns. When aerodynamic features are specified on a new vehicle they are extremely cost effective and can repay the investment in less than one year. Even modifying an existing vehicle can be cost effective providing you choose wisely.

Our Specialist Seminar will show you how you can save 16-20% on your fuel costs.

It will cover:
• How to improve a rigid truck
• How to improve a tipper truck
• How to improve an articulated truck
• What not to do
• Case Studies
• Follow-on effect

5. SITE VISITS
We offer a programme of site visits for SMEs (Small to Medium sized Enterprises with an annual turnover of less than 40M euros).

Our advisor will make arrangements to visit your company and will ask to see your fuel records for a period preceding his visit. They will then give advice to you on what you should be doing to reduce your fuel costs.

The visit will take up to half a day and, on completion, the Advisor will write a brief report on their recommendations. You will then be encouraged to continue providing fuel data and the Advisor will return after a month or so to evaluate your progress.