Bringing Down the One Cost That Keeps Going Up

The high cost of fuel. It's the No. 1 challenge facing fleet managers today. Fuel price volatility is insidious in itself, adding an average of 3% to your overall fleet operating costs, but its impact also pushes up other fleet costs. Like falling dominos, the cost of tires, mobile repair, towing and other services have all followed fuel in an upward spiral.

Proactive Fuel Cost Reduction is not a one-step, take-the-easy-way-out program that puts the axe to key items in your fuel budget. It was created by ARI to help win your war against soaring fuel costs by giving you tools to better manage the fleet activities that impact fuel economy: vehicle acquisition, operation and maintenance and driver training, behavior and communication.

Proactive Fuel enables you to eliminate or improve inefficient, wasteful practices and conduct—two major villains that conspire to drive your costs up every day. It replaces them with efficient processes and policies that you control to optimize your fleet's purchase and use of fuel. The approach is "proactive" because you manage fuel use and expenses by setting standards before purchases are made, thus helping to prevent unnecessarily high charges.

Your Safety Net
The war against soaring fuel costs is won through the successful partnership of ARI and each customer. We work together as equal partners, and that partnership becomes your safety net.

As part of Proactive Fuel, we work with clients to conduct lifecycle analyses, collect vehicle and driver data, set performance benchmarks, explore alternative fueling, and establish a comprehensive fuel plan covering functional interactions, policy and behavior adjustments (e.g., stipulating grade of fuel to be used, enforcing driver purchase limits at the pump), vehicle/driver compliance, and success measurement.

A Bottom-Line Synergy
Proactive Fuel draws on the synergy of ARI's entire service offering. We touch all the bases and make sure that relevant services, including our proprietary fuel card and fleet MasterCard™, maintenance management, Driver Excellence, vehicle acquisition and telematics, work in sync as part of your program to bring sanity back to your fuel budget.

Greening Your Fleet the Right Way
It starts in the boardroom. As carbon strategy becomes a more pressing business issue, corporate imperatives mandate that fleet managers put planet-friendly vehicles on the road. In partnership with customers, ARI can equip fleets with technologies and methodologies that shrink your carbon footprint, save dollars through lower fuel use and better operation—and keep your fleet fully compliant with corporate mandates and the law.

We work with you to profile your fleet practices and fuel use, size up your carbon footprint and assess its cost impact on your company. Next we roll out our EnviroFleet® arsenal, help you choose from among the broadest and best environmental offering available today, and together we design a green solution that fits your fleet.

Real Clients, Real Savings
Our offering today is enabling ARI clients to post major efficiency and economy gains with car and truck fleets and diesel vehicles. Strategies such as adding hybrids and NRCAN-certified vehicles to selectors, "right-sizing” with minimum fuel economy requirements, and specifying/upfitting trucks by work application are generating fuel savings in the range of 12%-20% and emission reductions of 9%-15%.

Our fuel management and alternative fuel strategies translate directly into savings, and several customers now spend an average of 15% less at the pump. Preventive maintenance with a focus on efficiency and safety has also lowered expenditures at the pump by a similar 15%.

One client's telematics system worked so successfully as a route-planning fuel-saver it earned the company enough payback to offset the system's entire cost. Another customer combined telematics technology with ARI Driver Excellence and an enforceable new driver policy, thus creating a powerful productivity tool that saved 30% on fuel purchases.

Your Fleet Can Make a Difference
The list goes on and includes many other successes, all built on ARI best practices that cut emissions, save measurable amounts of energy and dollars, and keep fleets in full corporate and legal compliance. Together we can colour your fleet green. It starts with a call to your local ARI rep.