More and more companies are making strides towards greener fleets, with industry giants like DPD leading the way. Adopting more sustainable practices within your fleet not only benefits the environment, but your business as well.
Making the switch to a greener fleet can save you money on taxes, reduce fuel costs and more. Conversely, adhering to outdated fleet management practices can wrack up heavy fines for things like using banned fuels, driving through Clean Air Zones and operating vehicles that don’t meet emissions standards.
A fleet management system is a useful tool in making a fleet greener, and can make the switch easier than you’d think.
How to use GPS Reporting
While you may understand the importance of tracking your vehicle fleet, it may not always be clear how to use that data. GPS Reporting should be a benefit to your fleet manager, not a burden. The first place to start is to ask yourself what are the most important factors impacting your company?
With some vehicle tracking products you can be overburdened with the amount of vehicle and driver GPS reporting. These products require even more work on the part of the fleet manager in order to make the data useful. Vimcar’s GPS reporting on the other hand, is targeted and practical. We focus on the solutions our customer’s needs, then adapt our product to solve those probelms without requiring multiple softwares or gadgets.
Get a Beginners Guide to Green Fleets:
Here are some practical ways in which you can use Fleet Geo’s GPS reporting and vehicle tracking to meet your companies sustainability goals:
Working Towards a Greener Fleet – How Does a GPS Tracker Help?
1. Make it easy to abide by Clean Air Zone regulations
Clean Air Zones (CAZ) are areas where action is being taken to improve air quality. These areas could be entire cities or individual streets. CAZs will be going into effect in the UK soon, so it’s important to prepare your fleet accordingly for the new regulations.
Fleet management tools, like Fleet Geo, make it easier to abide by CAZ regulations. The route planning feature lets you examine each vehicle’s route and make adjustments so CAZs can be avoided in the future. Additionally, Fleet Geo can be used to create Geofences around CAZs. You’ll be notified when one of your vehicles enters a CAZ in real-time and can alter the route as needed to prevent it happening again.
2. Reduces fuel consumption
One of the primary ways fleet tracking systems promote a green fleet is by reducing fuel consumption. By using GPS trackers, you’ll be able to make changes to routes to limit drive times, reduce idling times and decrease turnaround times by providing customers with more accurate ETAs. An efficient fleet doesn’t waste fuel, and by monitoring your vehicles in this way you’ll decrease your fuel consumption, save money and help the environment all at once.
Read more: Real Time GPS Trackers for a Richer & Greener Business
3. Monitors mileage and helps abide by tax laws
One of the most challenging aspects of managing a green fleet is adhering to ever-changing tax regulations. Fleet managers need to stay up to date on tax laws to ensure they’re saving money when possible and avoiding unnecessary fines at all costs.
Here are just a few of the taxes and regulations that have been implemented most recently:
- BIK Electric Car Tax: The government has recently announced that company car drivers using a pure electric vehicle will pay no benefit-in-kind (BIK) tax in 2020/21. There are two new BIK tables available, one for company cars registered before April 6, 2020 and one for company cars registered after that date.
- Ultra-Low Emission Zones: As of April 2019, London became the world’s first Ultra-Low Emission Zone (ULEZ). Petrol and diesel vehicles that don’t meet the required emissions standards will be fined.
- Fuel Duty Freeze: UK fuel duty is 57.95 pence per litre for petrol and diesel. There’s been a fuel duty freeze since 2011, but it may increase in upcoming months.
With the route history documentation feature of your fleet tracking system, you can better monitor vehicle mileage. This data can be used for tax purposes in addition to meeting internal goals surrounding fuel consumption, vehicle usage and more.
Why Shift to an Electric Fleet?
Electric vehicles will attract no Benefit-in-Kind (BIK) rates in 2020, and just 1% in 2021. Because of this, half of UK fleet managers are expecting an “accelerated uptake” of electric vehicles, reports FleetNews.
Why Running a Green Fleet Makes Financial Sense
With the UK government set to end the sale of diesel and petrol cars by 2030, it makes sense for businesses and organisations to start making steps towards green fleets. Running a green fleet is one of the best strategies that companies and organisations can use to improve their environmental ratings and cut ongoing costs.
The UK government is committed to reducing the impact that people and organisations have on the environment. The main reason being it has introduced policies that will take diesel and petrol vehicles out of our roads. The government has also introduced taxes and regulations such as the fuel duty freeze, BIK electric car tax, and the ultra-low emission zones geared towards green.
Read more: What is fleet insurance?
Green Fleet & State Funding
We all know that carbon emissions are harmful to the environment. When a business entity goes green, it improves its environmental credentials, and this doesn’t go unnoticed by the public. Today, businesses must have social media accounts as a way of engaging with current and potential customers. However, social media has created an avenue where companies looked up, positively and negatively, every day.
Companies that run in an environmentally friendly way gets plenty of positive mentions online. It makes the company look good in the public’s eyes and attract skilled employees looking to work with an environmentally conscious organisation. It makes both environmental sense and Financial acumen to go green.
The following are some of the ways that the fleet makes both financial senses to businesses:
Even though the 2018 budget introduced some changes to the grants available for hybrid and fully electric vehicles, businesses should still take advantage of the open government grants.
For example, companies can get access to donations up to 35 percent of the vehicle’s total cost capped at £3,500, depending on the car type. For more oversised vehicles such as vans, businesses can get grants of 20 percent of the vehicle’s price to a maximum of £8,000. As you can see, these grants allow companies to make savings that can be re-invested.
Reducing Car Maintenance
It’s a fact that electric vehicles in green fleets have fewer parts and don’t require as much maintenance as petrol and diesel vehicles. Operating green fleets is suitable for businesses because there’s almost no downtime, meaning drivers are always on the move. It also saves money that would otherwise be on maintenance. These funds can be in use to buy more electric vehicles or improve other areas of the business.
Lower Long-term Expenditure
Organisations that run green fleets have lower monthly operating costs, which are down to insurance bills, vehicle tax, fuel costs, etc.
As you can see, it makes environmental and financial sense, and organisations should take full advantage. However, it would be best to have proper fleet management software to run the fleet efficiently. The software gives fleet managers full control to run the business and meet their goal to conserve a healthy environment.
