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Championing the fuel cause

1st July 2010, Page 16
1st July 2010
Page 16
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Page 16, 1st July 2010 — Championing the fuel cause
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

Fancy saving E300,000 on your fuel bill? Hanson Cement's Neil Callaghan has the answers.

Words: LULiibt: Cote, Images: atuart Woad WHEN NEIL CALLAGHAN joined Castle Cement recently rebranded as Hanson Cement -people were watching fuel. They were running trials, noticing things and yet, nothing was changing. As Dr Michael Coyle, the fuel consultant Castle invited in. says: "There was lots of data, but no information."

Castle has three manufacturing sites and seven depots, with 58 vehicles. It now proudly claims to have the lowest carbon emissions of any UK cement-maker. despite producing three million tonnes of cement a year. In 2007, when Callaghan took up his role, the company badly needed fuel savings.

"We had a mix of Volvo and MercedesBenz trucks and a computerised fuel system, but no-one was checking or reconciling the [fuel bunkers] or fuel against vehicles," he says.

Coyle joined the organisation and made recommendations, including a fuel champion course, which Callaghan undertook by distance learning. After one intensive day at Huddersfield University examining Castle's data, he had four assignments ahead of him: to gather thoughts about fuel economy from the entire business: to choose a fuel savings intervention; and then trial it: and to produce a report prior to implementation across the fleet.

Callaghan's background as an engineer, driver, transport manager, and CPC holder all stood him in good stead as he surveyed the entire business. His aims now were to reduce fuel costs and emissions and to bring all the trials under the co-ordination of a single person.

"The first thing we needed was accurate fuel data. Each pump was computerised, with mileage and a PIN number entered by the driver, so as an exercise I decided to look at the truck I used to drive. It turned out that all its fuel for the past 12 months had been recorded against a Land Rover in the quarry. At the time no-one could understand why this four-wheel drive was getting 6mpg," he says.

Callaghan decided to raise average mpg across the fleet from 76mpg to 8mpg. "It sounds like a small increase, but it's quite difficult on a 44-tonner. At the time, 0.1mpg would save us £450 per truck per year and 1.2 tonnes of CO2. So 0.4mpg would have saved us £1,800 a truck, or for a fleet size of 168 vehicles, [Castle's fleet plus Hanson's] £302,400."

The biggest intervention Callaghan instigated was a lowering of trailer roofs. As cement cubes out. height was unnecessary and the trailers stood proud of the cabs by almost 500mm."We ran a trial at MIRA with two vehicles, one standard, one lowered.Then we covered more than 3,000 miles by road over four months with the lowered roof. We estimated we'd save 0.1mpg for every 100mm. In the event it brought in 0.48mpg, or 6.3%, and over the whole fleet should save us £135.000 a year over the 58 curtainsiders."

The trailers are adjusted when they go in for refurbishment, so it only costs an extra £800. So far, 15 have been lowered. The lowered trailers bring the added advantage of eliminating detours

around London to avoid low bridges.

Meanwhile, other interventions have been working their magic. "We've already hit our target of 8mpg in three years and we still have 40 trailers to lower,says Callaghan.

He adds that the company started using Volvo and Mercedes-Benz's telematics solutions to monitor driver behaviour: "I show the drivers data for their vehicle type and they ask how they are doing, but we don't like league tables, which embarrass those at the bottom."

Callaghan took the bold step of ignoring manufacturer advice and trialling energy-efficient tyres on several vehicles at each depot, despite the gruelling conditions and short distances not being their optimum application. Nine months on, they are showing fair resilience to quarry life and a 3.35mpg fuel saving.

"One of the biggest challenges was persuading workshop guys who were already doing some work in this area to start investing time and money," he savs. "You need to control trials in a working environment carefully For instance, we put energy [efficient] tyres on the whole vehicle, so it was important that no-one swapped out the trailer."

Rear air diffusers have also undergone basic trails and suggest a 3% saving.

In addition, the company chose a synthetic oil. "It has only increased our fuel economy slightly, but it has doubled service intervals from 50.000km to 100,000km, so we have less (.1( lower servicing costs and we wasting as much oil." he says.

Hanson was recently bought dclbergCement,Castles parent c and its Civil & Marine division merged with Castle to create Ha ment. Callaghan now hopes k fuel-saving initiatives across the ed fleet, which now comprises tI tainsiders, plus 110 tankers. Th( could potentially add up to m 000,000.

"The trick to tackling your ft is to look at all the interventi then rule out the ones that clea apply to your business. For inst couldn't use gas because our wouldn't be able to refuel off-bi Callaghan. "1 check all the fuel most weeks, and once a montl out all the mileages against ir cheek them against the telen doesn't matter if telematitz sys calibrated slightly differently, k fore provide' different figures manual records, as long as yr regularly enough to know and a the discrepancy.

As Michael Coyle would sa begins and ends with the data."

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