Which of the following is the odd one out; Iran, Donald Trump, North Korea, OPEC, fuel tax or Idle? If you guessed idle, congratulations. All the above could have an impact on the price of fuel in New Zealand, both as a private user and business operator. While you can't control most of these variables that influence the price you pay at the pump, the one you can influence fleet idle.
An idle event as defined by Smartrak is when a vehicle has been stopped for more than 2 minutes. Looking at a sample of vehicles tracked by Smartrak in the 2017 calendar year, petrol vehicles on average spent 12.01% of their drive time, idling. This works out to be 43.38 hours of idle time per vehicle per year or approximately $56.49 per vehicle a year in fuel costs from idling.
The new Auckland regional fuel tax will cost businesses 10 cents per litre (excl GST) from the 1st July 2018. This approximate 5.5% increase in fuel prices will impact operational costs for many businesses. Analysing your fleet's idle history presents an opportunity to reduce unnecessary fuel consumption due to idle and offset the cost of new taxes.
If a fleet operator can reduce their idle by 50% and save $28.25 per vehicle per year as a result, then that helps cover Auckland's new regional fuel tax on approximately 282 litres of fuel per year. How far that gets you depends on how efficient your vehicles are, but a vehicle doing 7 litres per 100km, 282 litres is the equivalent of travelling 4,028km.
