Four ways to be idle-free:
- Turn off your ignition if you’re waiting more than 10 seconds. Contrary to popular belief, restarting your vehicle does not burn more fuel than leaving it idling. In fact, idling for just 10 seconds wastes more gas than restarting the engine.
- Warm up your engine by driving it, not by idling. Today’s electronic engines do not need to warm up, even in winter. The best way to warm the engine is by easing into your drive and avoiding excessive engine revving. After just a few seconds, your vehicle is safe to drive. The vehicle’s engine warms twice as quickly when driven.
- Warm up the cabin interior by driving, not idling. Easing into your drive is also the best way to get your vehicle’s heating system delivering warmer air faster. Sitting in an idling car means you are breathing in more of the dirty exhaust that leaks into the car cabin. Any warmth you may get from a car heater is not worth the damage to your health. If parked and waiting, it is healthier to get out of your car and go inside a store or building.
- Protect your vehicle engine by idling less. Frequent restarts are no longer hard on a car’s engine and battery. The added wear (which amounts to no more than $10 a year) is much less costly than the cost of wasted fuel (which can add up to $70-650 a year, depending on fuel prices, idling habits and vehicle type). Idling actually increases overall engine wear by causing the car to operate for longer than necessary.
4. Bad Fuel Quality – vehicles can get 5% lower consumption due to fuel quality
Knowing some basic facts about the gasoline you buy will help you get the most out of it, and keep your vehicle in better health…
Diesels is huge cost every trucking company has and we are looking for every way possible to save money at the pump. We already shy away from premium fuel, and we would like to save a few pennies per gallon more by going to an off-brand gas station. But, the one question remaining unclear here is: Is the cheaper gas going to damage the vehicle engine?
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Same as it is with most things in life the best answer for this question will be to take the middle ground. We might not be able to afford to buy the “Top Tier” diesel, but we sure can choose the middle priced standard gas and that way we will not only save on the years that our vehicle have left in it, but we will also save us some money on the long run.
Bad diesel is not a myth. Fouled fuel found in a vehicle tank can usually be linked to a few suspects: it either came from the refinery, the distributor or the filling station down the street.
In efforts to increase profit margins, gasoline suppliers often reduce, eliminate or use less effective detergent additives. Some commonly used low-quality deposit control additives accumulate on intake valve stems and cause them to stick, while others cause additional combustion chamber deposits.
High-quality additives effectively keep injectors, valves and combustion chambers deposit-free, are more expensive and often replaced with cheaper knock-offs.
The fuel from different filling stations comes from a common source: the “base gas” from a refinery. Workers there mix additives mandated by the Environmental Protection Agency into the base gas in order to clean a car’s engine and reduce emissions.
Then, the different gas companies — both off-brand and major brands — put their own additive packages in the gas to further boost both cleaning and performance.
A key difference is that the major brands put more additives in their gas and claim to have some secret ingredients. This extra shot of additives provides an additional level of cleaning and protection for your engine.
We, the consumers, think that we are saving money by seeking out cheaper gas. But what we don’t realize is that the discount gasoline that we are buying actually can cost us money in the long run by compromising our fuel economy and causing deposit build-up in the engine.
By using better quality gasoline, we will keep the engines clean, maximize fuel economy and performance, and avoid the need for expensive fuel injector service down the road.
5. Expensive Maintenance – Plan and Maintain vehicles so they don’t breakdown while on the road, causing expensive repairs
Buying a truck, whether new or second-hand is a big investment and large responsibility. Owners should regularly maintain their vehicles to protect their investment and to keep them safe and roadworthy.
Every Trucking business that has a number of vehicles it owns and uses for its activities has a vehicle fleet. The job of maintaining this fleet so that all the vehicles are available and usable for employees is critical for availability as well as if the company wants to keep an active scrutiny on what it pays for its vehicles. Failure to have good fleet maintenance in all of its aspects will result in an unnecessary loss of company funds, assets and mobility.
One way of keeping everything under control is by having a Database that can be used for a number of different purposes. A database application is also the perfect solution for a company that needs to create and monitor a maintenance plan for its fleet of vehicles.
To keep your vehicle in top condition and to avoid the possibility of sudden breakdown or expensive repairs in the future, you should follow the maintenance schedule in the database.
The tables in the database can be used to store information on every vehicle in the fleet, while data entry forms can be used to enter new data on each of those fleet vehicles. Creating a database is simple, cheap and easy!
Things You’ll Need:
- Computer
- Database program
- Vehicle records
Source: www.ryevalleygear.com
Emergency repairs cost 3 to 9 times more than planned repairs, so maintenance plans that rely on breakdown maintenance are generally the most expensive because shutdowns happen during production runs (instead of per-scheduled maintenance shutdowns during downtime).
