Casella Waste Systems is rerouting fleets in order to cut costs. The firm says the move should reduce expenses by about 5 percent.

When the economy began heading south last year, Gary Simmons knew his company needed to start investigating cost-savings initiatives — and fast.

For Simmons, vice president of fleet management at Casella Waste Systems, Rutland, Vt., everything was on the table: Casella's truck specifications, routes, even the "green" initiatives pursued by the company. Simmons was interested in anything that would control or reduce costs.

For example, the firm is planning to replace its end-dump transfer trailers with tipper trailers. "The increased load capacity will mean 250,000 fewer over-the-road miles, along with the resulting cost and environmental savings of such a reduction," Simmons says.

Casella also is in the process of re-routing much of its collection fleet, from which Simmons expects to achieve a 5 percent cost savings. Furthermore, the company is focusing on improving fuel economy. Casella operates approximately 1,250 vehicles, including front loaders, rear loaders, side loaders, recycling trucks, support vehicles, tractor-trailers and roll-off trucks. Thus, fuel economy is a significant operating metric, both for financial and environmental reasons, Simmons points out.

"We've instituted a very stringent anti-idle policy and track fuel usage daily, route-by-route, by both miles and hours," he says. "We've focused on making it part of our culture to eliminate excessive idling, which often occurs out of bad habits or due to outdated assumptions that engines must idle longer than three minutes to function properly. This is an important part of our effort to achieve that significant milestone to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, but also to save fuel and money."

Big Picture

Douglas Weichman, director of the fleet management division for Palm Beach County, Fla., notes that in times like these, managers in both the private and public sectors need to look at their entire fleet — including vehicles, facilities and staff — in order to find cost savings.

"Take tires as an example," Weichman says. "We're starting to spec low-rolling resistance tires on all of our equipment as these are the ones best suited to improve fuel economy. Will they improve vehicle fuel economy across the board? Not for everything we manage. But if we even get some savings then it's worth it."

Expanding the use of retreads represents another opportunity for cost savings. "For years as a public entity we got good pricing on new tires, so we didn't have to look at retreads," Weichman says. "Now we're firing up a retread program, as it'll help cut our tire costs by almost two-thirds. We're looking at going from spending $400 on a new truck tire to $120 for a good quality retread."

Palm Beach County also is limiting vehicle idling, going so far as to require automatic engine shutdown for vehicles idling more than 10 seconds.

"We're also monitoring vehicle usage more," Weichman says. "We're looking at the mileage/hours vehicles compile over a year to see if we can eliminate some without compromising our service." As a result, Weichman's been able to reduce his total fleet from 4,800 units down to just fewer than 4,500.

He claims this saves the county money in two ways. "For starters, taking the asset off the books saves a lot of capital," he says. "But then you have the ripple effect — fewer parts to stock to keep that vehicle running. Reducing that parts inventory saves you carrying costs going forward."