Fleet Total Cost of Ownership

A focus on lubrication can reduce your total cost of ownership in two ways. The first is ensuring that all your vehicles are supplied with the most appropriate lubricant solution. Then it’s equally important to ensure that your workforce understands the principles of effective lubricant management.

For our fleet customers the most obvious advantage of optimal lubrication is an improvement in fuel efficiency. But beyond this, you can drive down costs by extending your vehicle life through the protection of critical components. You can also reduce unplanned vehicle downtime and improve your driving performance in challenging conditions, such as changeable weather or when carrying higher loads.

Our technical specialists are ready to work with you to optimise your lubricant solutions. We have helped our customers around the world to save at least $139m through the proper selection and application of lubricants, and through training and empowering staff in lubrication management.

In today’s market, there are numerous challenges facing fleets. From more stringent emissions regulations, to rising fuel costs and growing competition – particularly in the wake of sophisticated digital innovations – fleet operators need to be sharper than ever in order to protect and grow their businesses.

Despite the challenge, only half of fleet managers consider lubricant product performance as a significant purchase consideration. At a time when driving efficiencies and reducing costs is at a critical point for many fleets, choosing a weak performance, generic lubricant can create significant risks, costs and problems down the line. Yet once again, over half of fleet managers do not expect quality lubricants and lubrication practices to help them cut maintenance costs.

With Shell’s existing expertise in the sector, working with customers and OEMs, Shell lubricants and lubrication practices have proven to reduce the total cost per kilometre for fleets in a number of ways. For heavy duty diesel fleets, the high cost of the equipment is particularly important to protect with dependable lubrication.

The benefits that proper quality lubricants and axle oils have are common to all fleets, when managed the right way. These benefits include improving component life, reducing vehicle down time, increasing oil drain intervals and preserving the engine’s cleanliness; for instance when a vehicle is under a higher load, ascending steep inclines or driving through sandy or dirty terrain. All of these things are costs fleet businesses have to deal with, and all of these costs can be reduced with the right lubricant and lubrication practices.

_{Based on research commissioned by Shell Lubricants, conducted by Edelman Intelligence (Nov - Dec 2015.)}

1. _{Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is defined by Shell Lubricants as the total amount spent on the equipment, incl. cost of acquisition and operation over its entire working life, and costs from lost production during downtime.}
2. _{Based on savings delivered to Shell Lubricants customers.}