When attendees at the Fleet News round table, sponsored by Goodyear Dunlop, were asked to name the biggest cost they were facing there was a resounding response: “Fuel.”

At the time average UK diesel prices were more than 143 pence per litre and the Government had just announced the Office of Fair Trading would be investigating fuel prices, so it’s no surprise fuel was high on their list.

On top of that, several attendees had HGVs to worry about as well as vans and company cars.

Androulla Sofroniou, of construction company Hanson, even has cement mixers to contend with.

They do an average 8-10mpg and if they travel just five miles out of the way to fill up it costs Hanson a lot of money.

Fuel prices have since dropped to around 142ppl but there’s no real sign that this issue will go away.

Fleet News: What can you do about fuel costs?

Geoff Wright: There are only three things we’ve got control over.

Is the vehicle we’re using the best for the job? Are we doing the most efficient routes? And is the driver driving the vehicle the most effectively? I’ve got no control over the cost of fuel.

You can do a bit around whether to buy at Platts price or buy on the spot, but you’re not going to get that much of a difference.

Jo Hammonds: We introduced speed limiters to our vans and we’ve seen a huge reduction. It’s the single biggest way we’ve saved on fuel. We’ve saved between 5% and 10%.

It’s difficult to work out exactly because we’ve done it over stages. Five years ago we limited speed to 70mph and then we brought it down to 60mph.

Richard Crook: We’re looking at possibly bringing automatics back into the van fleet.

A good driver with a manual will always beat an automatic but on a non-professional driver fleet having automatics will bring the average up because the vehicle will change gear at a predetermined rpm.

But we have to work out whether the cost of speccing that is worth it.

Five years ago the numbers didn’t stack up, but the way fuel prices are now it might be worth investing in. One thing I’ve learned is don’t dismiss anything totally because things change.

Fleet News: Is a single brand or multi-brand fuel card better?

Richard Crook: We’ve opted for one brand rather than a multi-brand card. Like anything, the more volumes you can offer a supplier the better.

And for 80-90% of our business, one brand is fine. There are only a few remote locations where a multi-brand card is justifiable.W