Fleet management and driver safety platform Motive will host its annual Vision user conference next week in Las Vegas. My husband will travel with me, and when many depart that Friday, he and I will be making our way to the Grand Canyon. But there are several other stops we wanted to add in over the weekend: the Hoover Dam, Bryce Canyon, Antelope Canyon and Horseshoe Bend to name a few.
We determined the best route, considering timing and distance, by maneuvering the stops in Google Maps and taking a guess at how long we would stay at each location.
That works for a single-vehicle family road trip, not so much for a commercial fleet with a multitude of vehicles, routes and drivers that needs to maximize resources while minimizing time and costs, especially with diesel prices at highs not seen since 2022.
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“You're not just trying to optimize for one driver,” said Lytx Chief Technology Officer Rajesh Rudraradhya. “You're trying to optimize for the amount of jobs you need to finish in a particular day. You don't want a situation where a driver is idling for an hour, and the other guy is struggling to catch up.”
While route optimization isn’t a new concept, technology is advancing the options fleets have available to address it as part of their strategies to save on fuel costs.
Routing technology
Motive and Lytx offer two of those options.
Lytx recently rolled out a new feature and announced additional considerations in progress. Rudraradhya recently presented Fleet Strategist at the annual Lytx Protect user conference. Fleet Strategist, which identifies patterns that are too complex for humans by correlating driver events, weather, routes, etc. to surface smarter operational decisions, is among several AI Agents the company has released.
The company is also working on a route optimization tool for its LytxOne platform that would consider things like age of equipment, driver background, weather, fuel, traffic, safety and other data points. Still in the lab, the tool would allow users to adjust sliders based on what factors they want to consider for optimizing the route.
Geotab’s routing and optimization tool offers a similar function that allows users to weight route optimization based on their preferred metrics, from fuel savings to on-time delivery. It uses an AI algorithm that assesses against a number of factors to determine where fleets can obtain optimizations between origin and destination and then applies those weights.
Geotab Vice President of Product Management Sabina Martin said, second to idle reduction, route optimization technology is the best way to save on fuel costs without having to change vehicles or coach drivers.
“Optimizing your routing can have a direct impact on fuel consumption,” she said. “Making sure that you have the right people and the right vehicles going to the right jobs, and you're minimizing overlap and duplication, and you're optimizing for pickups, can ensure those vehicles are being used as efficiently as possible throughout the day.”
Fuel factors
Super Dispatch, which provides technology for auto haulers, ensures that efficiency with its Trips function. While it optimizes routing from a mileage perspective, it also identifies how vehicles should be placed on the trailer for the most efficient loading and unloading process. The provider also recently launched a new fuel card. Like most fuel card providers, SuperCard includes a fuel-finding tool that highlights the most affordable fuel directly along planned routes based on available discounts.
Trucker Path, an app that offers a free load board and truck stop locator, recently partnered with fuel card provider WEX to offer drivers its discounts along their routes. Trucker Path also has its own tool called Fuel Optimizer within its navigation feature.
Based on how much fuel is in the tank at the beginning of a trip and how many miles per gallon the truck gets, the tool calculates when the truck will begin to run low on fuel and identifies the cheapest fuel price in the identified geography. The tool informs the driver to stop and purchase a given amount of fuel that will get them to the next fueling station with cheapest price.
“They may not be filling up full tanks all the time, but they're always using the fuel that's the cheapest throughout the journey,” said Trucker Path Chief Marketing Officer Chris Oliver. “There's a tradeoff between the time it takes for an extra stop, perhaps, and the fuel discount, but it definitely drives the fuel cost down.”
On the ground
Fleets want to use route optimization tools that identify the shortest or quickest routes. Many tools consider factors that could affect routes along the way like traffic and weather, but there’s one that gets even more granular.
The iQ-Cruise system by Traxen includes weather and traffic monitoring, but it also observes the roads themselves, including things like curvature and elevation via radars on the truck, Cloud-based GPS tracking and high-definition 3D maps. Accounting for road conditions, the estimated vehicle load and standard commands for power upon takeoff, iQ-Cruise, which replaces a truck’s OEM-installed cruise control, manages the speed of the truck as necessary to optimize for fuel consumption.
“We will generally attack hills … and will allow the vehicles momentum to allow it to crest. Likewise … we're predicting what the speed should be when you hit the bottom of a grade, as well as on curves, because we know the radius of the curves, we know the banks of it, and we know the weight of the vehicle,” said Tim Bauer of Eaton, the distributor, service provider and installation support partner for the system. “The driver still has control of the vehicle. We're not driving for them. We are adjusting the speed based on all of those elements.”
Mesilla Valley Transportation (CCJ Top 250, No. 59), recently purchased 1,400 of the iQ-Cruise systems. The fleet is known for its fuel efficiency, but Founder Royal Jones said he is always looking for something new or different to improve that metric. His fleet averages around 9 MPG.
Jones said he has some drivers who can get in a truck that averages 6 MPG but make it get 8 MPG.
“In the old days, we were taught to drive by the lay of the land. That is you acting like a roller coaster. It's slightly downhill, so roll out of that throttle and let it go. Let it go because there's no need for fuel,” he said.
He said some drivers get it, and some drivers don’t, but the iQ-Cruise system does it for them.
Oliver said fleets are short selling themselves from an operational perspective if they’re not making the most of these types of tools that are readily available.
“I don't think there is any one magic silver bullet. It's a combination of multiple disciplines. I think it really comes down to making the most of the technologies they have in play and the discipline that it takes to adhere to what the data is telling you to do,” Oliver said. “You have to use (technology) today. The old days of no tech or light tech just really don't work anymore, and that curve is going to continue as we go forward.”
