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The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) recently released an informative video: The Power of Scale.

What fleet efficiency can do for your company and the planet

This video seeks to provide a path to understand that individual actions can add up, inexorably, to something much larger. Just like millions of SUV tailpipes are contributing to driving climate chaos, millions taking steps to reduce the impact of their actions can help change the situation for the better.

For those of you not yet in the know, fleet efficiency is about reducing fuel consumption by taking incremental actions, including choosing better routes, avoiding idling and moving to higher MPG vehicles. These actions add up to fuel savings and emission reductions, especially when multiplied by the millions of vehicles in U.S. corporate fleets.

Sigh …

Sadly, this video focuses on what “she” (the driver of a company car, e.g. the employee) can do even though this is about “fleet vehicles” (e.g. company fleets). The video talks to what individuals can do with a fleet vehicle that mirror what we can do with our own cars: choose the right size (higher mpg!) vehicle, keep tires inflated, choose efficient routes, …

Again, this is about ‘fleet efficiency”, rather than individual actors, and the video doesn’t take even a moment to suggest that there is something beyond the individual, that there is an organizational and institutional role to play.

Well, there are businesses and institutions that are recognizing that there are ‘fleet-wide’ actions and choices that truly add up to ‘fleet efficiency’.

The following are just a few examples.

• Wal-Mart (and increasingly other companies) has put in APUs in its trucks so that they do not idle the trucks when sitting in, for example, a parking lot or at a loading dock. They also have, as I understand it, a system monitoring every one of their trucks which, among other things, pings the system if a truck is stopped 15+ minutes without switching to the APU. This is part of an overall Wal-Mart program to double the fuel efficiency of their trucking fleet. (Note, this is a complicated calculation as much of the ‘efficiency’ is not to the truck but because of changing their cargo patterns, etc … but it is fleet fuel efficiency.)
• UPS has a system to program in routes to emphasize right turns over left turns. They did this for making the routes more time efficient. This has a fuel impact savings due to reduced idling time at lights/waiting for traffic for left turns.  As well,

UPS drivers are trained to always turn off their package cars when they stop for a delivery, never idling at the curb or in a driveway. “Even if the driver is out of the truck for a few seconds, the vehicle is always turned off.”

• The US Marine Corps had a problem with increasing accidents with USMC vehicles. As part of a path to improve safety, they installed video cameras in the cars for a record in case of accident. They did not expect this but there was a significant (believe 15+%) improvement in fuel efficiency because the Marine drivers drove more cautiously / slower and thus more efficiently.

I will tell you that as soon as the Marines realized they were being filmed, and when you add that if they committed a violation or had an accident, they had to report to their CO, who in many cases was a general officer, guess what? They slowed down. So not only is that a good safety thing, but we saved a lot of fuel in the process of slowing them down. So there’s good news there.

• There are companies that have installed feedback systems with reporting back as to driving patterns, speed, etc… Often done for safety reasons, drivers know that their bosses will know if they are driving well above speed limit (and thus less fuel efficiently).
• There are systems for automatic monitoring of, for example, tire pressure not just within a car but to have that reported to a central ‘maintenance’ so that the company will ensure that tire efficiency is correct.

There are many other things that fleet managers can do from buying more fuel efficient vehicles (including hybrids), right-size rental car policies, etc …

Individuals matter and individual actions can add up. But, even though it isn’t an either/or situation,  even larger impact can come ‘from the system’ making choices for efficiency.

EDF understands this, that there are things beyond the individual, that far more powerful than the enthusiastic individual actor are established policies, standards, and regulations that embed more efficient, energy-smart practices as the norm rather than the exceptional exception.  They even had a five-step framework for a green fleet. Sadly, however, this video highlights the individual actor and seems to place the burden of action and impact on that individual employee rather than on the fleet owner / manager to change the overall system.