Fuel routing at Knight now!

My company did this a while back. The concept is to gain savings on fuel by routing the truck to cheaper fuel prices. However, it adds extra miles to the trips and any extra savings that may have been earned is completely wasted. Not to mention it adds rage to the driver who is not getting compensated to go out of route.

Fuel routing also has a second purpose where this is beneficial and that is the Fuel Tax. It's different in every state. Why buy more fuel in a state with a high tax rate if you only drive a 100 or so miles in it a week? Then again, you don't want to buy to much fuel in low tax rate states and end up owing either (this is why I never purchase fuel in Indiana).

There are benefits to fuel routing, but as the price of diesel goes up, they become less and less. Out of route miles start to add up and extra fuel costs savings begin to disappear.

I'm going to take a guess that Knight is taking a strategic advantage of the dropped fuel prices while the gettin is good. It is a detriment to the drivers, but overall operations will benefit from the savings. Once prices get higher, I would expect the fuel routing to disappear to something more practical.

My company dropped their fuel routing once they learned this hard truth.

One last note: For those still on paper logs, fuel routing is a pain in the ###. It doesn't leave much freedom to adjust things to an advantage. For example, my day always starts with my pretrip and fuel purchase together. It saves me a 1/4 hour that could be beneficial later on. Fuel routing kinda made tweaking log books hard. Which might be another reason why Knight switched. Who knows?

 

Well ever sense I started at KR they have done SUGGESTED fuel stops and routing. I ignore both. I've been doing this long enough to know the best way to get from a to b and I have a fuel book which sates where the primary and secondary stops are.