GE helps businesses cut fuel costs, cut carbon emissions

11 June 2008

The United States passed a painful yet historic milestone this week as the national average price per gallon of regular gasoline surpassed $4 for the first time on Sunday, 8 June. As rising fuel costs continue to put the breaks on the overall economy, some businesses are pushing ahead by reducing average fuel costs by 15 per cent with savings up to $15,000 per vehicle.

They are taking advantage of a new, comprehensive programme called 'environmental performance from GE Capital Solutions Fleet Services'. Combining technology and analytical solutions, Environmental Performance, one of GE's first Ecomagination-certified services, includes telematics that baseline where and how each vehicle is performing. Ecomagination is a GE business strategy to help meet customers' demand for more energy-efficient products and to drive reliable growth for GE. ( See: GE's 'ecomagination' business grows to $14 billion; revenue target raised to $25 billion as orders top $70 billion ) 

Metrics centrally captured for analysis include total distance driven, fuel use, drive time and CO2 emission by vehicle along with speed and time spent idling. Based on this real-time data, GE helps fleet managers re-sequence their existing routes and re-assign deliveries to different drivers. The resulting benefits from harnessing and then using the information to better manage a vehicle fleet are notable-double digit plus improvements in accidents rates, overtime costs, customer retention, workforce productivity, carbon emissions as well as fuel costs savings.

One customer that's truly been delighted is Truly Nolen of America, one of the largest family-owned pest control companies in the United States. Headquartered in Tucson, Arizona with 75 branch offices in Arizona, California, Florida, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas and Utah, the company has deployed GE's solution in more than 400 of its service and sales vehicles to date, says Bob Hartley, vice president Technical Services at Truly Nolen.

"We realised benefits immediately as we saw that technicians were leaving vehicles idling to run air conditioning while on service calls. Having line of sight into that wasteful practice allowed us to stop it, saving us about $300 in fuel costs per vehicle per year while also lowering CO2 emissions," Hartley said.

"Additionally, GE's solution has helped us optimise our driving routes, prevent misuse of fuel cards, and reduce speeding. It's been great so far, and keeps getting better as more features are added," added Hartley. "That's why we're in the process of deploying this GE Fleet Services offering across our entire fleet of 900 vehicles."