5 Eco-Friendly Driving Habits

5 habits of eco-friendly drivers & fleets

April showers may bring May flowers, but truck drivers bring everything else. The truth is many believe that significant positive impact on the environment can only be made at the company-level, but it is truck drivers who must adopt the change. Luckily, there are new tools available to support fleet management teams and make implementing and enforcing these changes among drivers easier.

For example, you’ve likely heard the buzz around electric vehicles and some of the larger carriers in the transportation industry are already testing them out for transportation. There is other technology being adopted by fleets such as alternative fuels and telematics.

Alternative fuels can help reduce emissions while telematics provides a carrier real-time data about their fleet’s performance. You might be wondering how that can help save the planet, so let’s dive into some of the data that telematics provides:

Fuel Efficiency Monitoring: Telematics can deliver fuel consumption data in real-time to drivers and fleet management teams.
Driver Behavior Insight: Tracking speed and gathering data on driver behavior can help drivers or fleets identify potential areas of improvement in driving habits to increase fuel efficiency. For example, hard braking and rapid acceleration alerts paired with fuel consumption reporting can provide data showing just how driving habits affect fuel efficiency.
Maintenance Issue Monitoring: Tracking maintenance issues and reporting them to drivers and fleet management teams before the issue becomes severe…there’s nothing wrong with some automated proactive maintenance to help keep drivers and fleets moving.

Telematics is not something everyone can go out and get, especially with the market right now, but that doesn’t mean you can’t change your habits now. The good news is that we have learned different tactics to be more eco-friendly from the fleets and drivers already using telematics and previous research.

So, what can truck drivers do while on the road to help support sustainability and planet earth?

5 ECO-FRIENDLY DRIVING HABITS to ADOPT TODAY

Be conscious of your driving speed:
- Maintain consistent speed
- Avoid quick acceleration and braking
- Reduce speed and use cruise control whenever you can
Don’t neglect maintenance:
- Keep the tires inflated
- Alert your dispatcher of any issues right away
- Keep to a regular maintenance schedule
- Change air filters regularly
Be aware of idle time:
- Use your GPS to see the avoid traffic to reduce idle time
- Avoid idling when stuck in traffic or whenever you are stopped for a decent amount of time by turning off your engine
- Use APUs (auxiliary power units)
Advocate for greener solutions over disposal:
- Always ask about donation, recycling, or reuse when it comes to OSDs, even though it may not be your call, plant the idea and see if it will grow!
- Look out for food banks, recycling centers, or donation centers in the area
Reduce personal waste:
- Reusable water bottles are an easy way to start
- Meal prep when you can to avoid paper and plastic packaging from food service
- Collect recyclable items as you travel and bring them to a recycling facility (maybe even convince your home terminal to provide a recycling option)

These simple changes can help the environment in a big way if adopted industry-wide. It is estimated that the adoption of fuel-efficient driving habits by trucking in the United States could help reduce fuel consumption by 20%. According to the North American Council for Freight Efficiency, these habits could reduce diesel consumption in the United States by almost 10 billion gallons per year, which is the equivalent to removing about 20 million passenger vehicles.

Want to know how we use telematics in our fleet?

To learn about our 3 AMX transportation divisions (AMX Trucking, AMX Logistics, & AMX Drayage), start a conversation with one of our AMX experts: