Attaining Superior Fuel Reductions that Lower Operating Costs

In the heavy construction industry, keeping rolling stock going is both the source of the biggest expense and the source of the answers to cutting those expenses. Maintenance programs can go a long way toward that end, but it’s the ability to lower the fuel costs that can take it the extra mile. For Northern Virginia’s Superior Paving, lowering fuel costs would require systems and processes that tracked and analyzed its source and its use.

With nine asphalt plants across Northern Virginia, Manassas-based Superior Paving has paved most of the area’s major arteries and stands as a major resource for VDOT as well as innumerable commercial project drivers. Over its more than 40-year history, the company has developed a reputation for excellence, integrity and innovation. While the company sees its success as being rooted in those attributes as manifested by their 250 employees, it is also rooted in an ability to provide quality at a competitive price. As the market becomes more competitive, finding ways to maintain that quality while lowering the big expense of fuel is one of several keys to continued growth.

With a total of 270 pieces of equipment within their rolling stock compliment, the cost of fuel was a major expense. With fuel at $3 per gallon at that juncture, the company had no way of knowing the specifics on one of their largest expenses. Although they knew that their fleet filled up either at service stations throughout the area or fueled at one of five asphalt plants equipped with bulk diesel tanks, the company had not been seriously tracking fuel consumption.

Phase 1: Starting the Process

Knowing that they could use some guidance on tackling the problem in the right way, the company brought in North Carolina-based TBR Strategies. The goal of the maintenance and reliability consulting firm was to analyze and assess their challenges and the company overall. Once completed, they could create a customized plan for implementation of Total Process Reliability (TPR) methodologies to tackle identified challenges. With an initial focus on the equipment division, TBR Strategies CEO Preston Ingalls began a Maintenance Effectiveness Assessment (MEA) of the entire company in November 2013. This focused on the off-road and on-road equipment portions of the company’s rolling stock, which did not include asphalt plant equipment. Once completed, the company began an official kickoff of the TPR implementation process in March 2014.

The company had no system in place for monitoring diesel fueling at the asphalt plant locations in 2014. According to Superior Paving CFO Nick Ellis, the question of tracking fuel consumption stood as a major challenge to cost reductions and efficient operations. “Although the plant personnel was paying attention, there was no passcode or other verifiable way to monitor who was filling up and when,” said Ellis. “Ingalls made this reality top of mind, in that while we had conscientious and honest employees, it was a surety that fuel was being used without our knowledge.”

With no aggregate knowledge of fuel expense, the first step was to develop a method for tracking all of the fuel in terms of gallons used. This would enable establishment of a baseline for tracking the success of reduction processes and solutions to be designed and implemented in the next phase. Working at the direction of CEO Frank Surface, Superior Paving TPR Coordinator Jacob Dodson and Ellis instituted a fueling method consolidation plan. This included implementation of a bulk diesel fuel dispensing system at the plant and a fuel-card system for on-road gasoline vehicles. “We knew that we couldn’t accurately track fuel consumption without a standardized process, so that was our first step,” said Ellis.

Phase 2: The Right Technology

Both Dodson and Ellis knew that retail outlet fill-ups were costing them as much as 30 cents more per gallon than their bulk diesel purchase price on fuel delivered to the asphalt plant pumps. This made it obvious that they would need to empower the organization’s operators to go to the plant for all diesel fill-ups, which would bring an immediate 10 percent reduction in fuel costs. “We realized that not everyone could fuel up at a plant, as portions of our fleet run on gasoline, but we still needed reporting tools to tell where people were fueling up, how much they were getting and data on other factors,” said Ellis.

That was the catalyst in 2014 for buying several OPW Fuel Management Petro Vend Kiosk card reader systems, as well as the tracking software. These computer access stations require a passcode and equipment number to get fuel from the pump. By the third quarter of 2014, all of the asphalt plant pumps were equipped with fueling kiosks, which provided Superior with real-time fuel tracking.

According to Surface, this was only the first of many necessary steps that would need to be taken. “That first year of TPR, we had so many other things on our plate, such as PMs, operator care and other aspects, that fuel usage couldn’t be fully engaged,” said Surface. “We knew that by the 2015 paving season, we would have to have the full methodology and processes in place in order to process gallons used, idling time and other factors.”

Phase 3: Process Implementation

Simultaneous with the rollout of the Petro-Vend kiosks at the plant locations, the company began a capital investment in GPS to be outfitted on the rolling stock to track idling and run time. The information from the GPS trackers, Petro Vend Kiosks and the fuel purchase data from the retail gas cards flowed back to the company’s databases for creation of highly detailed fuel consumption tracking reports. This would set the stage for the next phase of the process.

The first order of business in preparing for 2015 was for executive leadership to appoint a fuel team that could focus on the process, tracking and solution implementation. Designed as a subcommittee of the TPR Committee, the fuel team would consist of Ellis, Dodson, Michelle Kerns from the marketing department and Moses Greenberg from accounting. “We invested time every 2 weeks to meet with the group consistently, and each team member took different equipment categories to make assessment and tracking more manageable,” said Dodson.

The process enabled the team to identify change management processes and the necessary steps for making the changes a reality via a master plan. This culminated in creation of a detailed process outline that was disseminated to company managers via email, as well as part of group meetings as an agenda item for discussion.

Managers then took it to their crews or whatever groups they were supervising and rolled out that process to them via outlines, handouts and other materials.

This provided the details, workforce roles and expectations for the new companywide process. “Our primary objective was to make sure that everyone understood the steps to be taken as well as individual expectations across the workforce for enabling this new process,” said Ellis.

Tracking Fuel

The GPS system would prove crucial to the tracking process, as it allowed the committee to divide the fleet into groups. Provided examples included asphalt plant loader groups of 10 to 14 or a group made up of the eight lowboys. This enabled deep-dive tracking of fuel stops and idling time via the GPS.

The nine service crew trucks and a single support truck could be tracked via the gas-card data that also went directly to the company databases. “Group segmentation enabled a clearer picture of fuel consumption, such as which pieces of equipment in the lowboy category idled more and which idled less,” said Ellis.

Once the fleet was segmented, specific managers were brought into the process as the liaison between the office analyst and the field to communicate further specifics on what the data showed them about any given piece of equipment. This provided a constant communication channel as fuel reduction processes were implemented. The process enabled improved acknowledgement and answer facilitation for underperforming reduction levels on individual equipment on a weekly basis.

Tackling Idling Time

The committee realized that the GPS data was telling them that one of the most pernicious challenges to fuel reduction was idling time. They instituted a policy that if rolling stock operators were idling more than 5 minutes, they would shut down the engine. The committee used their collective knowledge of the facts and the data to create a reasonable idling policy that would take into account the realities of the job, the equipment and the people on the crews. This 5-minute shutdown policy was flexible and relied on the judgment and experience of the operators that were in the field.

The fuel team trusted their judgment in understanding aspects, such as dump truck/paver approach time and when it would be less than 10 minutes, which wouldn’t apply to the rule. Conversely, they can also anticipate when they are going to be idling for 15 to 30 minutes and turn off the truck. “My favorite way to look at idling is that every piece of equipment is made to make money, and it can only do that when it is moving or performing work,” said Dodson. When it’s sitting still, it only costs money, so it’s important to minimize those costs as much as possible.”

Since blanket policies were counterproductive, the committee needed a way to bring classification based on circumstances and equipment type to bear. 

“Each equipment group had different expectations in performing their tasks, where some needed to idle more or worked in different ways. These different KPIs enabled us to differentiate vehicles by class and purpose so that we can compare them within their groups where they run differently and operate in different ways. Gaining that ability to compare them separately was our biggest success,” Ellis said.

Gaining Workforce Buy-In

One of the greatest strengths of the workforce is experience. Many crew members have worked with the company for 10 to 30 years. This also presents challenges when change must happen where organically developed processes become entrenched and are supported by faulty or even false information. 

“We’re asphalt guys and we had all of those construction culture myths that believed it was more efficient to let the trucks idle, rather than turn them off five times a day. This was grounded in myths of burning out starters and batteries and the supposed minimal costs of idling, as well as a variety of others. We had to dismantle those myths with facts that showed they weren’t true and why that wasn’t the best way for us to run the company,” Ellis said. 

The company understood that the right data would motivate their workforce to lower fuel consumption through the various processes put in place. They also knew that acknowledging a job well done must always be a part of the equation.

Each month’s idling category would reveal the operators with the lowest idle times and the team provided gift cards that acknowledged their hard work. “We wanted to make it personal, so managers and supervisors would drive into the field to present them personally,” said Dodson. “Even our CEO and President Jim Mitchell would take the time to go out and present them, which showed the workforce how important we felt that they were to the company’s growth and success.”

With less than a year of the fuel reduction plan in place, Superior Paving is seeing excellent results. According to the fuel team, idling time began as nearly 50 percent of fuel costs in the spring and had been reduced to 20 percent by the end of 2015. The result has been a 25 percent improvement in fuel usage per ton, year over year.

According to Surface, it all comes down to the superiority of their workforce in making anything that they do possible, including the fuel reduction program and its successes:

“We have extremely dedicated people that have a level of commitment to excellence that rivals the best of any industry. Again, I think it’s just awareness of when you start showing people the dollars that they save and how that impacts them in real terms,” Surface said. “You get their cooperation and commitment to make things better. We’re getting better at this all of the time, and it’s all due to our people.”