Speaking of fuel economy, it’s becoming increasingly clear that many fleets are leaving on the table, some free and easy fuel economy gains that are there for the taking. I’m talking about proper engine calibration dependent on duty cycle and application.

These parameters are already built into the engine, they just need to be set according to your own operating environment in order to begin delivering substantial fuel savings. Few fleets do this, and are instead seemingly content with off-the-shelf, one-size-fits-all engine programming.

“The easiest and quickest (way to improve fuel economy) is to look at all these engine parameters that the engine companies provide,” said Mike Roeth of TruckingEfficiency.org, which in a few weeks will be issuing a report on engine programming. “They’re free, they’re in the truck. A fleet just needs to work with the engine and truck manufacturer to get those parameters set in a way that will help them the most.”

Working on a similar project here in Canada is PIT. It claims nearly 80% of truck buyers accept the factory default engine settings and don’t calibrate the engine for their own operating conditions. Fuel economy can be improved by up to 15% just by properly tuning the engine, PIT claims. So there will be lots of interesting info available on this front soon.