business-services News
High cost of petrol and diesel now costing an arm and a leg
According to a recent survey undertaken by ‘Simple Motoring’ states that over the past 12 months due to the high cost of petrol and diesel now costing an arm and a leg it has forced UK motorists to squash their motoring fuel costs by staying off the road. In fact results show that almost two in three (65.9%) of those surveyed said that they were using their cars less as a direct result of the high fuel prices.
Further more…in an attempt in squashing their motoring costs further, more than half of those surveyed (51.4%) advised that over the last three years they had delayed servicing their car in order to actively save money – something which is highlighting that motorists are now being forced to effectively cut corners on safety and reliability in order to obtain short term savings.
Founder of Simple Motoring – Roland Head said of the findings:
“Reducing car usage to save money on fuel may well be a good thing as many people use their cars for short journeys which could be more easily walked. It’s a well known fact that cars use a lot of extra fuel on shorter journeys with cold engines, so avoiding such journeys generates easy savings for drivers.
More worrying is the trend towards delaying or omitting car servicing. Regular servicing is essential to keep cars safe and reliable and it also contributes to a car’s resale value – car owners will get less when they sell their car if it has a patchy service history.”
As many people are now realising that when times are tough, saving money by squashing those motoring expenses is an important if not essential thing to do, two of the best ways to do this is to either reduce the car use and / or maximise the vehicles fuel consumption. ‘Simple Motoring’ has put together five easy tips for car owners to help them shrink their fuel bills:
- Plan car usage to combine journeys and avoid using your car for journeys of less than a mile. Walk instead – it’s healthier for you and your car and it’s free.
- Keep your speed down on main roads and you will be surprised at how your fuel consumption improves – stick to 55mph on single carriageways and 60mph on motorways for maximum savings without losing much time.
- Make sure your tyres are correctly inflated at all times – under-inflated tyres cause increased drag and hence increased fuel consumption.
- Don’t carry around unnecessary clutter in your boot and remove roof boxes if they are not in use. The extra weight and drag will increase your car’s fuel consumption.
- Check out the cheapest fuel prices online before you fill up – but don’t go out of your way to save 1p per litre – as you’ll end up spending more than this on the extra fuel you’ll use to get to the garage.
- Whether a business or individual consider the use of a fuel card as often as much as 3 or 4 pence per litre can be saved when compared to the actual pump price.