Speed limiting my vans?
Discussion
Not made up my mind on this one yet. The department I run has 7 delivery vans, 2 car derived the rest are all LCV less this 3.5T GVW.
In a effort to reduce mainly reduce fuel costs I am considering speed limiting them. There are other benefits to this for the driver and the company too. Please give me your thoughts on this, specifically what speed?
Not interested in stories of how fast they have seen vans go, we all know white vans are particuarally fast, for the record not all mine are white but they are probably all capable of doing best part of 100mph.
Lastly should I do it via top speed or rev limit?
In a effort to reduce mainly reduce fuel costs I am considering speed limiting them. There are other benefits to this for the driver and the company too. Please give me your thoughts on this, specifically what speed?
Not interested in stories of how fast they have seen vans go, we all know white vans are particuarally fast, for the record not all mine are white but they are probably all capable of doing best part of 100mph.
Lastly should I do it via top speed or rev limit?
I know someone who ran a minibus company where he limited some of the vans, whatever happens the drivers find a way to be d
heads about it. A rev limit might not be practical if you carry heavy loads, because pulling away and accelerating up hills will be difficult. A 70mph speed limit might work, but it some drivers will sit at full throttle on the limiter just out of spite.
Another company I did some work for fitted trackers that also recorded the vehicles speed, then told the drivers they would get the sack if they were speeding. A few drivers lasted a day.
heads about it. A rev limit might not be practical if you carry heavy loads, because pulling away and accelerating up hills will be difficult. A 70mph speed limit might work, but it some drivers will sit at full throttle on the limiter just out of spite.Another company I did some work for fitted trackers that also recorded the vehicles speed, then told the drivers they would get the sack if they were speeding. A few drivers lasted a day.
I have driven my local council minibuses as a volunteer for a number of years and these are limited to 62mph even though the speed limit for minibuses on a motorway is 70mph. The modern buses have a soft limiter which you can play with, the older ones effectively switch off at 100kmh; they are very frustrating to drive.
Modern limiter on your local journey vehicles would be fine, national journey vehicles should have a sensible speed limit (say 75mph) in my view.
Modern limiter on your local journey vehicles would be fine, national journey vehicles should have a sensible speed limit (say 75mph) in my view.
Saving fuel with "dumb" speed limits won't get the best result, the drivers will push back against the idea and burn the fuel though more aggressive driving instead, since they perceive they need to drive 'harder' to get back to an acceptable journey time. In fact it won't make any difference to times, just fuel.
This is what I do for a living, on a large national fleet. Drop me a PM, I'll point you at some people who can help, and probably cash-positive for your business too.
This is what I do for a living, on a large national fleet. Drop me a PM, I'll point you at some people who can help, and probably cash-positive for your business too.
H100S said:
Not made up my mind on this one yet. The department I run has 7 delivery vans, 2 car derived the rest are all LCV less this 3.5T GVW.
In a effort to reduce mainly reduce fuel costs I am considering speed limiting them. There are other benefits to this for the driver and the company too. Please give me your thoughts on this, specifically what speed?
Not interested in stories of how fast they have seen vans go, we all know white vans are particuarally fast, for the record not all mine are white but they are probably all capable of doing best part of 100mph.
Lastly should I do it via top speed or rev limit?
What are your competitors doing?In a effort to reduce mainly reduce fuel costs I am considering speed limiting them. There are other benefits to this for the driver and the company too. Please give me your thoughts on this, specifically what speed?
Not interested in stories of how fast they have seen vans go, we all know white vans are particuarally fast, for the record not all mine are white but they are probably all capable of doing best part of 100mph.
Lastly should I do it via top speed or rev limit?
is there a way of reliably recording mpg? You could make it into a quarterly competition as to which driver can achieve highest mpg, and offer some kind of prize?
Adding a speed limit says to your drivers 'we dont trust you'
having an mpg contest says 'we've goto make fuel savings, so lets have a bit of fun with it'
I would say no. As said, alot of vans i see around here with the limited signs on tend to drive much more agressivley to maintain progress. I would just monitor what fuel they have used over the last couple of months for each van and see who drives hardest etc and just have a chat with them and asked/teach them to change their habbits. Might be a bit unrealistic, but whats to loose?
I would say tracker the vans, Alot more to go on and alot more info to use against drivers.
Our vans were limited to 70, Done hardly anything to fuel costs. Some would use 4th gear at high revs so it was easier to ovetake on motorways etc but then it would use more fuel. Barely noticed a drop in fuel costs.
Changed the vans and only had the new vans trackered. Everyone brought into a meeting and told them the new vans arent limited but are trackered. Do what you want, But we'll be in touch if your speeding or abusing the vans.
Fuel costs then dropped by almost half due to either the way the were driving them or the fact that they no longer risked used the van for personal use that they shouldnt have been in the first place.
One guy pulled the plug on his tracker on his day off then plugged it back in at night. The next day he came in and was back on his way home jobless within 20 minutes.
Give them a bit of slack but if they know they're on a radar then they soon change the behaviour, Speeding every now in then isnt that big a deal to us if its 80 on the M8 but excessive speeds stick out when viewing data.
Hope that helps.
Our vans were limited to 70, Done hardly anything to fuel costs. Some would use 4th gear at high revs so it was easier to ovetake on motorways etc but then it would use more fuel. Barely noticed a drop in fuel costs.
Changed the vans and only had the new vans trackered. Everyone brought into a meeting and told them the new vans arent limited but are trackered. Do what you want, But we'll be in touch if your speeding or abusing the vans.
Fuel costs then dropped by almost half due to either the way the were driving them or the fact that they no longer risked used the van for personal use that they shouldnt have been in the first place.
One guy pulled the plug on his tracker on his day off then plugged it back in at night. The next day he came in and was back on his way home jobless within 20 minutes.
Give them a bit of slack but if they know they're on a radar then they soon change the behaviour, Speeding every now in then isnt that big a deal to us if its 80 on the M8 but excessive speeds stick out when viewing data.
Hope that helps.
We have one van with a speed limiter(70mph) and the guy driving it thinks he is Lewis Hamilton he stated that he cannot get past slow vehicles on A roads and wants another van ? I have driven the van and found it to be fine, this driver uses far more fuel in that and other vans and also more repairs than other drivers so we are going to get them all limited.
Some great ideas comming up. Thanks, I have considered driver training too. I have already looked into optimising deliveies and amended routes / vehicle when possible this seems to have worked so far. To clear some things up, none of the vans carry heavy loads ever. They do have odd shaped items to carry hence the variety of fleet. Some vans are in and out just locally daily whilst others do many motorway miles daily. I retain fuel reciepts to monitor spend and mileage too.
JoPo1 said:
One guy pulled the plug on his tracker on his day off then plugged it back in at night. The next day he came in and was back on his way home jobless within 20 minutes.
Nice. What a lovely company you must be to work for. OP - Some mates have had systems like this in their vans, just be sure to balance the cost saving (minus the cost of the tracker systems) against royally pissing off your workforce and encouraging certain employees to find any way to get a bit extra back, in one mates case this was taking excess wire for personal scrap, or sockets/switches for 'foreigners' etc. Another common practice is filling a jerry can of diesel each fillup for their own car. Not right but when people feel so untrusted, some tend to think 'f
k it they don't trust me so why should I give a fk about them'.A speed limiter only would be a decent middle ground, question is will the business suffer if the drivers are currently speeding and you are going to stop this? If they speed, lets say 90mph on motorways, it's their licence on the line, but if you limit them to 70 and lets say a driver spends 3hrs per day on motorway, that's 60 miles per speeding driver you've lost to be made up elsewhere.
Edited by geeteeaye on Sunday 17th April 23:17
geeteeaye said:
Nice. What a lovely company you must be to work for.
Never get complaints except from the muppets that are sacked.Edited by geeteeaye on Sunday 17th April 23:17
What's bad about my company? Because some clown unplugged MY tracker on one of MY vans that he done so HE could use it on his DAY OFF that he should'nt be?
Aye, OK. I'll pay the fuel bill for someone to get a patio heater from B&Q. If he had asked it might have been different, But he chose to try and be smart and unplug his tracker, For all i knew he was tanking it down the 30mph zones at schools with MY company's name on the side of it.
Had he left it plugged in and used it then I could have asked him what was going on and just requested he replaced the diesel. But some fuds choose to be a
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