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• by Guy Sheppard
A Black Country haulier has won a £160,000 grant from the EU to find out if technology traditionally used by large fleets can be used to improve fuel efficiency among smaller operators.
AE Hawkins (Haulage Contractors) of Kingswinford, West Midlands is installing VDO Kienzle's Fleet Manager 200 to give a breakdown of how its vehicles are being driven.
The European Social Fund awarded the grant on the grounds that UK hauliers are being disadvantaged by high fuel costs.
The equipment will be fitted to three of Hawkins' 32 vehicles which are mainly used to transport bricks and aggregates.
Peter Hancox, operations manager of the family-run business, says they will show whether fuel is being stolen, how frequently drivers are braking sharply and whether vehicles are being over-revved or left idling unnecessarily.
The results will be compared with the perfor
mance of similar vehicles doing similar work.
"We all in our own way encourage drivers to be fuel efficient, but without sitting next to them every day it is difficult to identify areas that they need to brush up on. Hopefully, this is going to point us in the right direction," he adds.
Hancox points out that each mpg saved is worth around £3,600 year: "If we can save that throughout the fleet it stacks up quite substantially. We have to look at any way we can in order to reduce costs."
The bid for the grant was submitted by Stourbridge College, which runs its own road transport training arm near Hawkins' depot and will be helping Hawkins with the manpower to evaluate the systems.
College business development manager Scott Upton hopes the year-long experiment will prove to other small hauliers how new technology can help them save money. "If you show that a company like Hawkins has done it then it has more credence in the industry," he says.