You probably see it every day--A vehicle idles while a delivery person
unloads cargo, a driver runs into a business "just for a second," or an
unthinking person sits listening to the radio. I know that I see the
behavior almost daily as I pick up my son at his school. Parents sit in
their SUVs waiting with their engines while their gas gauge needles creep ever lower.
All that idling is
costing money and adding to the carbon load in our atmosphere.
Consider the following basic
facts:
- An idling
vehicle gets ZERO MILES PER GALLON! (obvious)
- Each and
every gallon of gasoline consumed equals 20 pounds of CO2 emitted into
the air. (Physicians For Social
Responsibility)
A
Case Study:
The fire department of one medium sized US city recently examined their
vehicle idling policies with some uniquely common sense outcomes.
Almost universally in the Emergency Medical Service and Fire Service in
the United States, emergency personnel leave their vehicles running
when on an emergency scene. In some situations, such as when the
vehicles are staged in a roadway with emergency lights on, this makes
perfect sense. All those flashing red lights require a significant
amount of electricity. Leaving the vehicle run is necessary to prevent
the batteries from draining. On a fire scene, engine powered lights and
fire pumps are needed by the emergency personnel as well.
The problem is that these common sense situations in which a running
engine are necessary have been extended to include each and every
situation in which an emergency vehicle goes on a call. In most
locations around our country, even if an ambulance or fire truck is
legally parked, the engine is left on just because "that's the way it's
done."
It took a forward-thinking firefighter at one fire department to
realize that this blanket policy is absurd. The city he worked for was
struggling under rapidly rising fuel costs. City fire and medical
personnel regularly worked in clouds of diesel smoke as they operated
on emergency scenes--diesel smoke that contains harmful carbon
particulates and carcinogenic benzene, among other harmful substances.
In addition, he noted that the manufacturers of the large diesel
engines his department used stated on their website that the practice
of running diesel vehicles at low idle was detrimental to the longevity
of engine components.
The department administration quickly recognized the
benefits of shutting off idling engines when appropriate. Firefighters
are not known to be the most open-minded people in the world, so the
new policy was met with a lot of grumbling, but the department is
seeing good buy-in after a few weeks. It is too early to determine
overall savings from the new policy, but when diesel prices in the city
in question hover around $4.50 per gallon or more, the cumulative
savings should be significant.
UPS:
Have you ever noticed that when your local UPS driver delivers a
package, the first thing he does is shut off his engine? A progressive
and efficiency-oriented company like UPS must recognize the benefit of
such a basic policy.
Here are a few misconceptions to
fight in getting your employees to cut down on vehicle idling:
"Diesel engines are meant
to idle."
In truth, diesels are least efficient at the low operating temperatures
associated with low idling RPM. If a large diesel is going to be idled,
most engine manufacturers recommend that a high-idle be employed, which
burns a lot more fuel.
"Starting a vehicle burns
more fuel and releases more pollutants than just letting the engine run."
It is true that engines release more pollutants when they are started
than when they are running, but the point of equality is much shorter
than most people would think. For most gasoline engines, they burn as
much fuel idling in 10-30 seconds than they do starting. The numbers
for diesel engines are slightly more, in the 30 seconds to one minute
range. A fair rule of thumb policy is that if a driver will be stopped
for greater than one minute, the engine should be shut off.
"Using the starter more
often will burn it up."
While it's true that using a mechanical device more will result in
greater wear, the likely fuel savings associated with shutting an
idling vehicle off will more than offset the cost of a shorter
maintenance interval on starter parts.
"Letting a vehicle warm
up before driving it makes it run better and last longer."
A vehicle warms up best when being driven slowly. Simply letting an
engine idle is not the most effective way to get it to operating
temperature. A vehicle is made up of many moving parts. To properly
warm a vehicle's transmission, suspension, steering and wheel bearings,
you need to slowly drive. Typically, driving on residential and city
surface streets will adequately warm up a vehicle before higher speed
highway driving.
"A vehicle should be left
running because it might not start again if it is shut off and that
could be costly due to delays."
This is a pretty thin argument, but it was the one most firefighters used when faced with the anti-idling ideas in our first case study. While a vehicle may not start, it also
may stop running at any time. Vehicles are, of course, mechanical
devices. Mechanical devices do, on occasion, fail. Using the line of
reasoning in this argument, we should leave all vehicles running at all
times just in case the vehicle might be needed. Of course, idling all
the time would mean that they mechanical parts would wear out faster,
making the vehicle less likely to run when needed...You get the picture.
So,
stop the idling!
It wastes fuel, wears out equipment, increases global warming, and
exposes you and your employees to harmful pollutants.
