Fuel efficiency has been the name of the auto game for a long time now. It’s true for personal vehicles and also for commercial ones. With fuel prices rising and traffic at massive highs, it’s more important than ever for cargo vehicles to rethink their approach and even their vehicles. This is particularly critical if you are a small business and can’t afford the latest fleet.
The good news is that there are several ways you can update your approach to your existing vehicle so that it runs for less, including these top five tips:
- Keep Everything Tuned Up
First things first, you need to service your vehicle regularly. This means regularly cleaning it, ensuring things like its oil are changed regularly, and so on. To help keep your costs low, it’s a good idea to know how to do regular tune-ups on your own. You can learn from a mentor, or even look towards your local community college.
- Add a Catch Can to Your Engine
If you want an easy, cost-effective upgrade that can help you minimize your fuel costs, add a catch can to your engine. Catch cans, as their name suggests, catch oil, water, or gas vapors in your PVC valve. Catching those particulates keeps your engine running like a dream, preventing build-up that can degrade your fuel economy or even the entire engine’s lifespan. Think of them as a filter for your intake system.
- Drive at Night
The worst thing for your fuel economy is stopping and starting. Unless you have a hybrid that easily gets you around city centers using minimal gas, you’ll want to switch to driving at unsociable hours like night. Doing all your deliveries at night saves your driver’s time and you gas money.
- Plan Out Your Route Carefully
Each route should be planned out carefully. Thankfully this can easily be done using digital tools that consider things like traffic and even optimal routes for multiple destinations. When you aren’t making back and forth trips and can also avoid traffic easily, you will save time and use up less fuel overall. For best results, plan out your route and go during the night, the early hours of the day before rush hour, and an hour before evening rush hour to save further.
- Upgrade Tires for Low Rolling Resistance
Upgrading your tires for low rolling resistance options is another easy way to make your vehicle more fuel efficient without outright replacing the vehicle itself. Upgrading your tires can improve your fuel economy by two to three percent. While yes, this is a very small amount at the start, over time, it can help you save collectively and make your vehicle more efficient to run as a whole.
Having proper tires for the season, of course, is more important. If you can’t get winter tires with this feature or need to use something like snow chains to get to point B safely, then prioritize that safety over the minimal amount of fuel economy.