How Mud Flaps are Fleet Fuel Savers

These flaps are different from traditional mud flaps: they are made to allow air to flow through them. Traditional mud flaps create a serious wind resistance that is significantly diminished by the open-style flaps.

What is the result of using these fleet fuel saver mud flaps on a big rig as opposed to traditional flaps? As much as 80 percent of the air going to the flap will pass through it. And that adds up to big savings on fuel. Any truck that is moving faster than 60 miles per hour will use approximately 65% of its fuel to allow the truck to compete with the oncoming wind.

Open-style fleet fuel saver mud flaps, by reducing some of the wind resistance a truck faces, save about five percent of the fuel in straight trucks and about eight percent in Class 8 vehicles. When the driver is facing high cross winds, the savings are even greater. Across a large fleet that’s moving all the time, this represents a significant amount of money.

The approximate 650 gallons of diesel fuel saved per tractor per year is the equivalent of the company receiving two weeks of free fuel annually for each vehicle equipped with the fuel saving mud flaps.

Not only do trucking companies (and independent operators) benefit from these mud flaps, but so does the environment. A rig equipped with them will send into the air six to eight fewer tons annually of polluting CO2. That’s something every company and driver should be glad about.

Consider another advantage: time. With less fuel usage, a truck requires less time at fuel stations having its tanks filled. For trucking firms, time is money, and the more time their trucks are on the road, the more profitable they will be.

Some have said, “Okay, this is a great innovation and a great fleet fuel saver. But mud flaps were originally designed to do a specific job, and that’s keeping road water spray and road debris from spewing up from under the tires and causing damage or danger to other vehicles.”

There is no worry here: with open-style flaps, debris and water are still deflected just as efficiently as with solid mud flaps.

In summary, any way a truck can cut down on wind resistance is going to save on fuel costs. Open-style mud flaps are one way that more and more trucking companies are saving money fleet-wide. With an annual savings of around 650 gallons per average truck per year, these ingenious mud flaps are truly proving their value.