When your business relies on moving goods across a long distance, the price of fuel can really cut into your profits and potentially make it not worth it to do take on certain jobs. The best way to save some costs is to make sure your trucks are as fuel-efficient as possible and to do that you need to know exactly how much fuel they are consuming regularly. If you have never figured out your fuel efficiency, here’s how to do it.

Don’t go by manufacturer’s estimates

When any new vehicle – including trucks – are purchased, the manufacturer will give you estimates as to what your fuel efficiency should be. These numbers are not always based on the way you will be using or driving the vehicle. Factors such as the condition of the vehicle, the way the driver drives it, weather and wear and tear on the vehicle can affect fuel efficiency. To get a real number of efficiency, you will need to do a few tests for yourself.

If you want to figure out the fuel efficiency of a vehicle, here’s what you need to do.

Start from full

The best way to determine how efficient a vehicle is is to start with the gas tank completely full. So put as much gas as you can in the tank. Next, you’re going to go to the odometer of your vehicle and reset the trip odometer so you’re starting from zero and don’t have to figure out the math on existing kilometers driven. If your vehicle doesn’t have a trip odometer then you will need to record the number on the odometer right after you fill up the tank.

Take a Drive

Now you will drive your truck around like you normally would – hit the road with a haul and head for your destination. Let your gas tank deplete down to at least half and then get to a gas station to refill the tank. After you refill it all the way, record the number of liters it took to get back to full. Once you get back in the truck then you’ll need to record the number of kilometers on the trip odometer, or the new odometer reading of the truck before you drive anywhere.

Do some Calculations

Take the number of kilometers on the trip odometer or the difference between the initial odometer reading and the final one. Those are the kilometers you traveled. Now take that number and divide it by the number of litres it took to refill the tank completely. This number will be your vehicle’s average kilometers per liter you traveled for this period. This will give you an idea of how efficient (or inefficient) your vehicle is.