April 2026: diesel at self-service pumps on the ordinary road network has crossed 2 €/litre, and on motorways it runs above 2.07. Reduced excise duties are renewed month by month, and the second-half outlook stays uncertain — with the ETS2 horizon now starting in 2028 (postponed by one year by the EU agreement of December 2025) threatening another +0.30 €/litre. Trade associations talk about one in five road haulage companies at risk of closure.
In this scenario a fleet’s margin is not defended by renewing the vehicle pool — orders for new heavy trucks have delivery times above 18 months, and a new Euro VI Step E costs 110-130 thousand euros. It is defended above all by working on the consumption of the fleet you already own, through seven operational levers that together produce a realistic 10-15% saving on fuel cost. Let’s go through them one by one, with concrete numbers and priority order.
1. Route optimisation (impact: -10/15% fuel)
This is the lever with the highest result-to-effort ratio. A VRP (Vehicle Routing Problem) system computes the optimal sequence of deliveries for each vehicle accounting for real constraints — time windows, payload capacity, low-emission zones, driver breaks — and produces a plan that cuts kilometres travelled by 10% to 20% at equal service. Fuel saving follows proportionally.
For a 20-vehicle fleet averaging 250 km/day × 240 operating days = 1,200,000 km/year, a 12% reduction means -144,000 km and roughly -€86,000/year in diesel alone (at 30 L/100 km and 2 €/L). On top come reduced toll spend, lower tyre wear and — often — the chance to cut 1-2 vehicles from the daily roster.
Those who plan today on Excel or “from memory” start from a baseline that leaves significant margin. Moving to an automated optimisation system produces measurable results in 2-3 months: our analysis of moving from Excel to automated planning goes into the operational detail of the change.
2. Eco-driving (impact: -10/25% consumption per vehicle)
Driving style accounts for up to 20% of the final consumption of a heavy vehicle. A structured eco-driving programme — four weeks, two theoretical modules and two in-cab coaching sessions — produces an average reduction between 10% and 25% on a single driver’s consumption, with the largest gains coming from the more “aggressive” drivers at the start.
The operational levers are well known: anticipating braking (every harsh braking burns kinetic energy turned into useless heat), keeping engine speed between 1,100 and 1,500 RPM in the peak-torque band, systematic use of adaptive cruise control where available, correct management of the air mass with the thermal regulator, reducing engine-on idle times. Nothing esoteric: practices most drivers know but don’t apply consistently without a feedback mechanism.
On a 20-vehicle fleet at 30 L/100 km, an average 12% reduction (realistic if the programme is well done) is about €18,000-22,000/year per driver at full regime. The necessary condition is telematics: without a system measuring each driver’s actual behaviour (harsh accelerations, decelerations, idle time, RPM compliance), the programme becomes a theoretical course with no measurability. This is the link to lever 7. For how to structure the eco-driving programme in 4 weeks and the specific behaviours that make the difference, see our dedicated deep-dive; for the wider picture on the driver resource, see our analysis of the driver shortage in Italy.
3. Maintenance and tyres: the invisible percentage points
Traditional “calendar-based” maintenance ignores some invisible consumption sources that account for an additional 5-10 percentage points:
- Tyre pressure: every 0.1 bar below the recommended pressure adds about 0.3% to consumption. A fleet driving on systematically -0.5 bar tyres burns +1.5% diesel without anyone noticing. A weekly check (manual or with TPMS sensors) eliminates the impact.
- Air filter: a clogged filter adds 5-10% to consumption. Replacement costs 20-40 € and should be brought forward over the nominal interval if the vehicle operates in dusty environments (construction sites, agrifood, urban LEZs).
- Injectors: progressive deposits add 3-5% to consumption. Chemical cleaning every 80,000-100,000 km prevents it.
- Engine oil of the right specification: using a “good but generic” oil instead of the OEM-specified one adds 1-2%.
Telematics with access to OBD/CAN bus parameters or, on the most recent vehicles, direct integration with the OEM cloud without additional hardware, allows real-time interception of anomalies (pressure, oil temperature, average RPM) before they become expensive corrective maintenance. Even systematic monitoring of tyre pressure on 20 vehicles — feasible with a one-off €30/sensor — is worth 1,500-2,500 €/year.
4. Optimal load and drop sequence
An under-loaded vehicle consumes nearly as much as a full one, but the cost per delivery rises. The lever isn’t “load more” — that depends on demand — but distributing the load better across vehicles so that each one operates in its efficiency sweet spot.
We’ll come back to the specific efficiency point of each vehicle, and how to derive it from historical fleet data, in a dedicated article; for now the operational rule is: plan so the drop sequence unloads the heaviest stops first (reducing the mass on the final segments of the route), and balance loads across the vehicles in the shift instead of concentrating them on the first ones. A good VRP system does this natively; “from memory” Excel does not.
The net effect measures at 2-4% of consumption at equal deliveries — not spectacular per vehicle, but on a 20-vehicle fleet at full regime that’s another 3,000-5,000 €/year.
5. Cutting empty kilometres
The empty return trip is the pure cost every dispatcher knows and almost no one measures systematically. For third-party haulage, backhaul (return load found in zone) is a standard but under-used option; for own-account, return consolidation — going to pick up returns, empties, scrap material on a pre-planned route — can recover 10-30% of empty kilometres.
The condition to do this systematically is having visibility on the KPI: how many km/day are actually empty? In most Italian fleets the figure is not measured. It’s one of the 7 KPIs every fleet manager should monitor — and one of the most directly tied to fuel cost. On heavy trucks the average load factor in Italy is around 60-65%; bringing it to 70% is typically worth 5-7% fuel saving across the year.
6. Refuelling planning
The differential between motorway diesel (2.07-2.10 €/L) and ordinary off-motorway road network (1.98-2.02 €/L) is structural and translates into about 4-5 €/100 L of difference. On a vehicle running 35,000 L/year that’s 1,400-1,750 € saving per vehicle just by directing refuelling toward cheaper points, with no operational change beyond intelligent mapping of partner stations.
For fleets above 20 vehicles or with geographic concentration (e.g. regional distribution), an in-house tank at the depot amplifies the advantage: wholesale supply contract on volume, management of refunded excise duties for own-account haulage (recovery of about 0.21 €/L for vehicles above 7.5 t), zero end-of-shift detours to refuel. Initial investment 15-25 thousand € for a homologated tank, payback 18-30 months on fleets of this size.
7. Telematics and driver-vs-driver benchmarking
The last lever is the one that unlocks the previous ones: measuring real consumption per vehicle, per driver, per route, and using the data to improve. Without telematics, the previous six levers stay theoretical; with telematics, each becomes a KPI with a reference value and a trend.
The pattern that works: comparing drivers on similar vehicles over the same routes, identifying the top 20% (lowest consumption), bringing the bottom 20% to the median through targeted coaching. The jump of the “bottom” toward the “median” is where the largest saving lies — top performers rarely improve beyond 2-3%, while the bottom can drop 10-15% in 6-8 weeks of accompaniment.
The technical mechanism requires three things: telematics installed on every vehicle (OBD for light commercials, CAN bus for heavy trucks, direct OEM cloud on natively connected vehicles — Sprinter 2022+, Ducato post-restyling 2024, Renault Master), a dashboard that normalises the data per vehicle/driver/route (consumption not absolute but relative to a benchmark), and a weekly review process with the fleet supervisor. The ROI of an integrated optimisation and telematics system is typically measured at 4-9 months on fleets of this size.
What does NOT work (and wastes time)
Three approaches fleets regularly attempt with disappointing results:
Buying new vehicles just for consumption: the jump from Euro VI Step C to Euro VI Step E is worth 3-5% on consumption, but the price differential (40-60 thousand € per vehicle) pays back in 7-10 years. Without other motivations (fleet renewal, urban LEZs, CSRD), it’s an investment that doesn’t justify itself.
Cash bonuses to top drivers: produce an efficiency peak in the first 60-90 days and then a plateau. Continuous feedback works much better, along with non-monetary recognition (best driver of the month visible in the company) and — for chronic cases — individual coaching.
Pushing responsibility on the driver without tools: asking “drive better” without a system measuring what “better” means produces frustration and no result.
A real case: Bonduelle
Among Optivo’s clients, Bonduelle — a food & beverage multinational — uses a custom platform for planning and cold-chain monitoring. The measured operational effect is a reduction of 2 trucks per day on the pilot area, achieved through a combination of route optimisation (lever 1), load balancing (lever 4) and reduction of empty trips (lever 5).
Conservative calculation: 2 trucks × ~300 km/day × 240 operating days = 144,000 km/year less. At 30 L/100 km and 2 €/L that’s about 86 thousand € of diesel alone avoided, before counting tolls, drivers, depreciation and wear. Over a three-year horizon, the three combined levers have a payback between 6 and 9 months on the platform cost.
Where to start
The seven levers have different costs and activation times. For a fleet starting from a non-optimised baseline, the priority order that works is this:
- Month 1: route optimisation (lever 1) → immediate impact
- Month 1-2: telematics and consumption dashboard (lever 7) → enables the others
- Month 2-4: structured eco-driving programme (lever 2) → requires telematics
- Month 3 onward: predictive maintenance, tyres, refuelling mapping (levers 3 and 6)
- At full regime: load balancing and backhaul (levers 4 and 5)
The realistic average result — if the seven levers are implemented with discipline — is a reduction of fuel cost per kilometre between 12% and 18% in 6-9 months, with no investment in new vehicles. On a 20-vehicle fleet, that’s 100-150 thousand € of annual savings at full regime.
If you want to understand where your fleet loses the most fuel and which sequence of levers produces the fastest payback in your specific case, talk to our team: one month of operational data is enough to identify the three priorities to focus on.