5 ways fleet managers can take control of rising fuel costs

Fuel prices don’t need to be at record highs to put pressure on fleet margins – they just need to move. And in Australia, they can move sharply. Geopolitical instability and supply disruptions pushed crude oil well above $100 per barrel at points in 2026, driving significant increases in refined products such as diesel (IEA). For Australian fleet operators, the exposure is structural: Australia imports the majority of its refined fuel, which means global supply disruptions – from conflicts affecting the Strait of Hormuz to currency movements – translate quickly into pump price changes, with limited domestic buffer.

Most fleet managers already know fuel is a significant cost – typically consuming 15–30% of a fleet’s total operating budget. What’s harder to plan for is how fast that cost can shift. When diesel surged by more than 40% in capital cities in early 2026, rising from around $2.20 per litre to above $3.10 in Sydney and Melbourne according to ACCC fuel price monitoring data, a 50-vehicle fleet averaging 25‬000 km per year at 10 litres per 100 km was suddenly facing more than $135‬000 in additional annual fuel costs. Prices have since eased with government excise relief, but the underlying dynamics – import dependency, currency exposure, geopolitical sensitivity – haven’t changed. The question isn’t whether a significant price movement will happen again. It’s whether your fleet will be ready when it does.

The gap between knowing and acting usually comes down to visibility into your operations. When you can see exactly where fuel is being wasted – which routes, which vehicles, which drivers, which habits – you can act. But without that data, you’re managing a fundamental cost centre with limited information.

Here are five areas where fleets consistently find fuel savings, and what it takes to capture them.

1. Cut fuel waste through smarter routing

Inefficient routing is one of the most straightforward sources of fuel waste in fleet operations, and one of the easiest to address once you have the right data. In Australia, the stakes are higher than in most markets. Vast distances between stops, dispersed regional operations, and the cost of remote-area diversions mean that every unnecessary kilometre carries a greater fuel penalty than it would in a more compact operating environment. Poorly sequenced stops, routes that don’t account for real-time traffic, unnecessary detours, and unplanned diversions all add kilometres that weren’t budgeted for – and in Australian conditions, those kilometres add up fast.

The impact compounds across a fleet. Even a few unnecessary kilometres per vehicle per day add up to a significant fuel bill by year’s end, especially in urban environments like Sydney and Melbourne where congestion can turn a short run into a long one, or on regional routes where the distances between stops are vast, and deviations are expensive. Connected fleet technology provides managers with real-time visibility into route performance and historical trip data.

That visibility helps you identify where vehicles deviate from planned routes, benchmark route efficiency across drivers and shifts, and make smarter scheduling decisions based on actual travel patterns rather than assumptions. Tighter routes mean fewer litres burned without reducing service delivery.

2. Stop burning fuel while standing still

A vehicle sitting still with its engine running consumes fuel and produces nothing. Industry data indicates that idling can use up to around 2 litres of fuel per hour, depending on the vehicle. It’s easy to dismiss idle time as a minor issue until you look at the aggregate numbers across an entire fleet over a month – and at current diesel prices, every unnecessary idling hour carries a real dollar cost.

Idle time accumulates in predictable places: waiting at customer sites, extended breaks, vehicles left running during loading and unloading, or engines kept running in extreme heat to maintain cab cooling. The challenge is that it’s largely invisible without telematics, making it one of those costs that quietly builds without anyone being accountable.

Real-time fleet monitoring captures idle time data at both the vehicle and driver levels, allowing managers to set thresholds and review trends over time. In practice, awareness drives rapid improvement: once drivers know their idle time is being tracked and reported, behaviour shifts quickly.

The Bakers Group, for example, saw fleet utilisation increase by 22% after deploying Powerfleet’s on-road solutions.

3. A poorly maintained vehicle costs you at the pump every single day

Fleet maintenance and fuel efficiency are directly connected, yet this link is often overlooked when maintenance is treated purely as a mechanical concern. An engine working harder than it should because of a missed service, low tyre pressure, or a clogged filter will burn more fuel while doing the same job as a well-maintained equivalent.

Under-inflated tyres alone can reduce fuel economy by 0.6% to 3% – a figure that may sound small until you multiply it across a fleet running hundreds of thousands of kilometres a month. Missed oil changes, worn components, and unresolved fault codes carry their own fuel penalties on top of that. In a sustained high-price environment, these inefficiencies compound quickly.

The maintenance approach you choose has cascading effects beyond fuel consumption alone. Reactive maintenance costs 3–5 times more than preventive maintenance. When you’re constantly putting out fires, vehicles spend more time in degraded states, burning excess fuel while you wait for parts or schedule repairs. A proactive approach catches issues before they compound into bigger problems that hurt your budget and your fuel efficiency.

Powerfleet Unity consolidates real-time and historical data, giving you visibility and control over your operations. Rather than reacting to breakdowns after they’ve already cost you time and fuel, you can accurately predict maintenance needs and ensure your fleet consistently operates at its most fuel-efficient state.

4. Build a driving culture that treats fuel as a shared responsibility

Eco-driving isn’t a one-off training exercise. It’s an operational standard. Fleets that integrate fuel-efficient driving practices into their culture see sustained reductions in consumption over time, rather than short-term improvements that fade when attention moves elsewhere.

The principles are well established: smooth acceleration, maintaining consistent speeds, anticipating stops early, reducing unnecessary load, and switching off engines when stationary. None of these requires any change to routes or schedules. It’s purely about how vehicles are driven.

What makes eco-driving stick is giving drivers access to their own data and fostering a culture of accountability. Powerfleet’s driver scoring and performance benchmarking tools make it easy to rank performance across the fleet, recognise consistently efficient drivers, and target coaching where it will have the most impact. Eco-driving programmes that combine real-time feedback with performance tracking report fuel reductions of up to 30% annually. At current diesel prices, a 10% reduction in consumption across a 50-vehicle fleet would save more than $45‬000 per year – with larger fleets and heavier vehicles seeing proportionally greater returns.

For high-mileage fleets covering hundreds of thousands of kilometres a month, even the lower end of that range represents substantial savings.

5. What happens inside the cab is costing you more than you think

Aggressive driving – hard acceleration, sharp braking, and speeding – doesn’t just increase safety risk. It also directly inflates fuel consumption. Research from the US Department of Energy estimates the fuel economy penalty for aggressive driving at 15 to 30% on highways and up to 40% in urban stop-start conditions. For a fleet, that’s a substantial hidden cost running through every shift, every day.

The difficulty has always been that cab behaviour is hard to observe at scale. Telematics data captures events after the fact, but context is often missing. Was that harsh braking a genuine hazard response or a habit? Was the driver distracted, fatigued, or simply unaware of the impact of their driving style?

Powerfleet’s VisionAI solution addresses this directly. Powered by AI-driven in-cab video technology, it delivers real-time risk detection, enabling you to monitor distraction, fatigue, and dangerous manoeuvres as they happen, not hours later. Fleet managers receive actionable alerts that make driver coaching specific and evidence-based rather than general and reactive.

The result is safer drivers who also happen to be more fuel-efficient drivers. VisionAI integrates with the Powerfleet Unity platform, so driver behaviour data sits alongside route, idle, and vehicle health information in a single operational view. That end-to-end visibility turns individual improvements into fleet-wide efficiency gains.

Where is your fleet losing fuel right now?

The fleets that manage fuel costs most effectively, through price spikes and quieter periods alike, share one thing: they already know exactly where their fuel is going before the next increase hits. Not in broad terms, but specifically. Which vehicles, which drivers, which routes, which habits. That visibility doesn't take weeks to build. But it does need to be in place before you need it.

Powerfleet’s On-Road IoT offering was built to give fleet operators exactly that visibility – in real time, across every vehicle, unified through the Powerfleet Unity platform. From predictive maintenance and route optimisation to in-cab coaching and idle management, every capability is designed to close the gap between what your fleet spends on fuel and what it needs to.

Talk to a Powerfleet specialist to find out where your fleet is losing fuel – and what it would take to get it back.