Your fleet may appear to be doing well, and you would likely be correct in your assessment. However, that may also mean that you are doing well based solely on the internal goals you have set for your organization.

Comparing yourself to other fleets is a broader way to assess how well you are doing. You need to benchmark yourself against similar organizations to see how well you are doing.

I know some of you are saying you can’t benchmark because there is no fleet like yours. To some extent, you are right. Every fleet specs its trucks differently and has its own unique operating characteristics, such as terrain traveled, temperature, and delivery windows. None of those things means benchmarking can’t be beneficial.

Most benchmarking reports include the factors used in collecting the data. If the factors don’t exactly align with the conditions under which your fleet operates, make adjustments so that you are looking at data that more accurately reflects what you do. For example, in the operations report we produced following Run on Less – Messy Middle, we discussed the impact of terrain on choosing a powertrain solution. Terrain also matters in determining fuel economy, and if you are operating in mountainous terrain, you might have to adjust national benchmark averages that may reflect fleets that don’t see elevation changes on a day-to-day basis.

NACFE has long believed that you can’t make improvements if you don’t know what your fuel economy numbers are. In 2012, to help the industry establish a benchmark, we began compiling data for the Fleet Fuel Study. The study is a deep dive into fleet adoption of a variety of technologies for improving freight efficiency. Fleets were asked to share data about their adoption of more than 80 technologies dating back to 2003. The Fleet Fuel Study has long been one of NACFE’s most downloaded reports, and I take that to mean that fleet managers want to know how they compare to other fleets.

We used to conduct the study every year, but more recently—since COVID—we have switched to collecting data every other year. This year, we are making some additional changes. Perhaps the biggest change is renaming the study to the Fleet Efficiency Study to more accurately describe its purpose: helping fleets improve efficiency, an important need regardless of the energy source. We’ve also streamlined the participation process by designing a new data portal.

At this point, we’d like to capture as much data as we can from as many fleets as we can. If you are interested in helping the industry by sharing your technology adoption practices (data is aggregated and anonymized), contact Yunsu Park at [email protected], and he can get you access to the portal. Here is a short video tutorial of how it works.

If you’re not ready to share what you’re doing yet, wait until the report is released later this fall to see how you compare with the fleets that participated in the survey.

The fleets that participated in the 2024 study operated 75,000 trucks and saved $512 million in 2023 compared to the average trucks on the road. And you have to remember that back in 2023, diesel fuel was not north of $5 a gallon.

We’d love more fleets to participate, but if the time isn’t right for you to do so, please take the time to review the benchmark data so you can gain actionable insights into how you can operate more efficiently than you already do.