How to track fuel use per bus (and spot the ones costing you)

Fuel is one of the biggest bills a bus company pays, and most companies only see it as one number: the fuel card statement at the end of the month. That number tells you fuel cost more than last month. It doesn't tell you which bus is burning more, whether a driver is idling for 20 minutes every morning, or whether someone's filling a personal car on the company card.

Learning how to track fuel use per bus fixes that. It takes a few seconds per fill-up, and it gives you each bus's real miles per gallon, its cost per mile, and an early warning when something changes.

Why track fuel per bus, not just per fleet

• Mechanical problems show up in fuel first. A dragging brake, low tire pressure or a failing injector often shows as a drop in MPG before anything else.
• Habits show up too. Long idling in the yard or at schools is wasted fuel, and it's visible per bus.
• Pricing a route needs real numbers. Your own MPG beats any average when you bid — see how many miles per gallon a school bus gets.
• Fuel card mistakes and misuse stand out when every fill is tied to a bus and an odometer reading.

How to track fuel use per bus: start with a fuel log

Here's how to keep a fuel log for fleet vehicles: one sheet per vehicle, with a line for every fill-up. Our free, printable fuel log has the vehicle number, year / make / model and fuel card at the top, then these columns: Date, Odometer, Gallons, Price / gallon, Total cost, Station, Miles since last, MPG and Initials. To make the numbers trustworthy:

1. 1One log per bus. Keep it in the bus or at the fuel desk — wherever the driver will actually fill it in.
2. 2Fill the tank to full every time. The MPG math assumes each fill tops the tank up; a half fill throws off that line.
3. 3Write the odometer at every fill. Without it there's no MPG, and it's the field that gets skipped most.
4. 4Copy the gallons and price from the receipt, not from memory, and keep the receipt.
5. 5Initial each line, so you know who to ask about an odd one.
6. 6Work out the miles and MPG when the sheet comes in, not months later.

How to calculate MPG from a fuel log

The formula is the one printed on the log: miles per gallon = miles since the last fill-up ÷ gallons added. Miles since the last fill-up is this odometer reading minus the last one. Here's a made-up example for one bus:

The first line has no MPG — there's no earlier reading to compare with. On Oct 11, the bus took more fuel for fewer miles: 260 ÷ 46.4 is about 5.6, well below its usual 7.0. One low line can be a partial fill before; two or three in a row is worth a look.

Fuel economy varies widely between buses — size, engine, fuel type, route and how much they idle all matter — so compare each bus with its own history and with similar buses on similar routes, not with a number from somewhere else.

Spotting the fill-ups that don't add up

• A drop in MPG on one bus. Check tire pressure, brakes and idling before anything else.
• More gallons than the tank holds. A typo — or fuel that went somewhere else.
• Two fills on the same day, or a fill on a weekend when the bus didn't run.
• An odometer that goes backwards or jumps by thousands — usually a typo, sometimes the wrong bus.
• An unusual station far from the bus's routes.
• One driver's fills always worse than other drivers' on the same bus — often idling.

A monthly fuel review in 15 minutes

1. 1List each bus's miles, gallons, MPG and fuel cost per mile for the month.
2. 2Sort by MPG and look at the bottom three, and at any bus that dropped from last month.
3. 3Check the odd lines above, and ask the driver who initialled them.
4. 4Send any bus with a real drop to the shop for a check.
5. 5Use the year's fuel figures to plan the next budget — the fleet fuel cost calculator works out a year's fuel, and what a price change would do.

If your district contract has a fuel clause, accurate per-bus records matter for billing too — see school bus contract fuel adjustment clause. Until you move to software, print a fuel log for every bus.

Doing it in FleetCommander

In FleetCommander's Fuel section, Log fuel asks for the vehicle (its fuel type fills in and its current odometer is shown), the driver, the date, station, gallons, price per gallon (the total is worked out), odometer and how it was paid — and a photo or PDF of the receipt if you have one. Save fuel entry, and the fill-up's MPG and $ / mi are worked out from the odometer. Import CSV loads many fill-ups at once, from a fuel card export for example.

The top of the Fuel page shows Fuel cost, Avg price / gal, Fleet MPG and Fuel cost / mile for the dates you choose, and the list can be filtered by vehicle, fuel type and dates. Each bus's page has its own Fuel section, fuel costs flow into Expenses and the vehicle's cost per mile automatically, and Reports has a Fuel consumption report to print or export. See fleet maintenance software for costs per vehicle.

Ava (Beta), the assistant built into FleetCommander, can log a fill-up from a sentence — Log 20 gallons for bus 102 at $3.89 — and shows a card first; nothing is saved until you confirm. Ask her Which bus used the most fuel last month?, Fuel this month vs last month or the last 3 fill-ups for bus 102 for your monthly review. More on her page.