Fleet Fuel Economy Tracker

Per fuel-up: miles driven since the last fill divided by the volume (gallons or litres) added — that's the MPG for that tank. Aggregate across fuel-ups for a vehicle or the fleet (total miles ÷ total volume) for the period average. Cost per mile = total fuel cost ÷ total miles, which captures both efficiency AND fuel price. Accurate logging requires recording miles and volume at every fill (a missed fill-up breaks the calculation), which is why fuel-card and telematics data are valuable — but a disciplined manual log works for any fleet size.

Scale. A fleet burning, say, 500,000 gallons a year sees a 5% efficiency improvement save 25,000 gallons — at any meaningful fuel price, that's tens of thousands of dollars, recurring annually, from a change that's barely noticeable per truck. Fuel's position as the largest operating cost means percentage improvements there beat percentage improvements almost anywhere else. And because within-fleet variation is large, fixing the worst performers (rather than improving an already-good average) often captures outsized savings. Small numbers per truck become large numbers per fleet — which is why granular tracking pays.

Three main categories: driver behavior (idling, speeding, hard acceleration/braking, poor gear use — often the biggest variable and addressable through coaching and incentives), vehicle condition (under-inflated tires, misalignment, engine/injector issues, aerodynamic drag — addressable through maintenance), and operational factors (routing, loading, route terrain). Tracking by vehicle isolates the maintenance issues (a truck's MPG declining points to a developing problem); tracking by driver isolates the behavioral ones (a driver consistently below average is a coaching target). The data tells you which lever to pull for each underperformer rather than applying generic fixes fleet-wide.

Closely — declining fuel economy is often an early maintenance warning. Under-inflated tires increase rolling resistance and cut MPG (and shorten tire life); misalignment does both; a failing fuel injector, dragging brake, or clogged air filter all hurt economy. So a vehicle whose MPG drifts down over time may be telling you about a maintenance issue before it becomes a failure — fuel data as a diagnostic. This is why the fuel, tire and maintenance trackers reinforce each other: the fuel log can flag the problem, the tire and PM trackers address the causes, and together they protect both fuel economy and the equipment. Watching MPG trends per vehicle catches problems the maintenance schedule alone might miss between services.