How Much Can a €0.10/L Fuel Increase Cost Your Fleet?
A €0.10/L increase in fuel prices may not sound like a significant change for many companies. For a transport company operating dozens or hundreds of trucks, however, that small difference can quickly translate into thousands of euros in additional monthly costs.
Fuel is one of the biggest operating expenses for carriers, so even relatively small price fluctuations can have a direct impact on margins.
How Does a €0.10/L Fuel Increase Affect Fleet Costs?
Fuel prices are influenced by much more than the price of crude oil. Geopolitical conflicts and tensions can disrupt oil supplies and trade routes, while refinery shutdowns, reduced production, and changes in global demand can tighten fuel supply.
This makes fuel prices difficult for carriers to predict and can lead to significant changes over relatively short periods. The impact becomes clearer when you look at fuel consumption across an entire fleet.
For example, assuming a 50-truck fleet where each vehicle uses around 3,000 litres of fuel per month, a €0.10/L increase would add approximately €15,000 to monthly fuel costs.
That equals €180,000 in additional fuel costs over a year, without the fleet travelling any additional kilometres.
Actual costs will vary depending on mileage, vehicle type, fuel consumption and operating conditions. But the example shows how quickly a relatively small change at the pump can become a significant fleet expense. Fuel price, however, is only one part of the equation. How and where trucks refuel can also affect the total cost of a journey.
Choosing the Right Fuel Station
Choosing the fuel station with the lowest diesel price may seem like the obvious way to save money. But the lowest price at the pump doesn’t always mean the lowest overall cost.
A cheaper station may require a detour, adding kilometres, fuel consumption and potentially toll costs. For long-haul transport, these additional expenses can quickly outweigh the saving on fuel.
The more effective approach is to consider the total cost of the journey — including fuel prices, distance, tolls and route efficiency. This is where automated route planning can help.
Four Ways to Protect Your Fuel Margin
When fuel prices rise, carriers should focus on the factors they can control:
- Plan routes around total journey cost, not just distance. The cheapest fuel station isn’t always the best choice, a detour can add kilometres, consumption, and tolls that outweigh the saving. Effective route planning should consider fuel prices, kilometres, tolls, and refuelling locations together.
- Identify which vehicles cost you more than they should. Two similar trucks travelling similar routes can still have very different consumption. Across a large fleet, even a relatively small difference in litres per 100 km can translate into tens or hundreds of thousands of euros annually.
- Reduce fuel lost through driving behaviour. Excessive idling, inefficient speed management, harsh acceleration, and braking all increase fuel consumption. The first step towards changing behaviour is knowing where, when, and with which vehicles it is happening.
- Plan refuelling stops before the driver starts the journey. Last-minute refuelling decisions made under time pressure, without price or route data, are rarely the most cost-effective ones. Pre-planned stops remove that guesswork.
The key is to combine fuel-price information with actual fleet and route data rather than treating fuel purchasing as a separate decision.
Fleethand AI: Turn Fuel Purchasing into a Route Optimisation Decision
With Fleethand AI, refuelling is not treated as a separate decision from route planning. When a route is calculated, Fleethand can evaluate available fuel stations and determine which option makes the most sense for that journey.
Instead of looking only at the fuel price, the calculation considers:
Fuel price + detour distance + additional consumption + toll costs + route efficiency
The result is a refuelling recommendation based on total journey cost, rather than simply selecting the lowest advertised fuel price. This matters because there is no single “best” fuel station. A station located a few kilometres away from the main route may make perfect financial sense for one journey and be completely uneconomical for another.
Combined with fuel monitoring and real-time fleet data, this gives carriers greater visibility over one of their largest operating expenses and helps them make more informed decisions when fuel prices fluctuate.
Managing Fuel Costs When Prices Rise
Fuel prices will continue to move. Carriers cannot control geopolitical events, refinery disruptions or global energy markets. But they can control how efficiently their fleet responds.
Every unnecessary kilometre, inefficient truck and poorly selected fuel stop becomes more expensive when fuel prices rise. That is why fuel optimisation becomes even more valuable in a volatile market.
See how Fleethand AI finds the most cost-efficient refuelling option for every route. Book a demo and see what smarter fuel decisions could save your fleet.
.