Without the proper maintenance, your vehicles won’t function properly and you’ll ultimately lose business. It will be harder to maintain a high level of performance if you have an insufficient number of drivers.
Fleet costs continue to increase annually, a trend that many have commented is unsustainable. One question is whether or not you should start buying your next fleet, but it might only be a matter of time before these costs are the same as they would be on the company you purchase them from.
With these product shifting tips, you won't have to worry about dealing with unnecessary downtime and significantly higher costs gone forever. Regardless of the number of your fleet size, these tips will help you manage your business better while improving productivity.
Here are 10 tips on Better Fleet Management.
1. Set Purchasing Requirements
You will want to gather information about your vehicles and drivers, as well as their performance, to optimize fleet usage or make good buying decisions in the future.
Allow the fleet manager or another employee to oversee all purchases and make sure that the key features required for purchasing are met. There are a few universal metrics every fleet manager should be aware of:
- Available and affordable replacement parts
- Easy vehicle replaceability
- Fuel efficiency below a certain rate
- Load carrying capacity
- A low total cost of ownership (TCO)
- Industry-specific features relevant for your company
2. Track Everything
Now you can require drivers to complete a comprehensive inspection checklist before they are let in the company. This not only improves your data tracking, it also encourages responsibility and accountability. Drivers are required to log mileage and any damage to their vehicles as well.
Fuel insights:
Fuel usage, including when to do a fuel fill-up, spread your fuel costs with long-term savings
Maintenance:
With proper maintenance and scheduled repairs, accurate labor costs can be determined.
Usage:
You can collect data from who is signing out vehicles and what time and date it was. Also, be sure to record an odometer reading.
Accident reports:
The date, time, location, and nature of all accidents including any witnesses or claim information.
Driver licensing:
Certification and Licensing and dates.
Driver performance:
Know your Driver performers, and record the dates, times, locations and nature of all accidents involving.
3. Use Driver Checklists
Now you can require drivers to complete a comprehensive inspection checklist before they are let in the company. This not only improves your data tracking, it also encourages responsibility and accountability. Drivers are required to log mileage and any damage to their vehicles as well.
Providing an inspection checklist and tracking who has completed a key deposit for return can help improve accountability. These tasks not only make managing your fleet easier, but also encourage good conduct. Drivers are required to document the mileage and any damage their vehicles incur.
4. Rotate Vehicle Usage
Vehicle distribution shouldn’t be a free-for-all. Some employees will select their favorite vehicle while others will choose the newest model every time.
It is important to equally share the wear and tear across your entire fleet. It is possible that trucks in even distribution never run, which leads to wearing out its warranty, while others rack up miles and cause your repair budget to equal the cost of a new truck.
Make sure to rotate which vehicles are sent out on jobs by deploying fleet management system that can automate rotation for you.
5. Optimize Your Schedules
If vehicles are sorted by a scheduler, your work will be completed efficiently. Now you can prioritize jobs, and also reserve essential vehicles for services. You can also use the fleet management system to set priority schedules for your staff members.
6. Do More Preventative Maintenance
Want to avoid major vehicle repairs? Take the proactive approach and get preventive maintenance done on your fleet now. Preventive maintenance is not only cheaper to buy in bulk, but it also allows you to avoid more major repairs in the future.
7. Optimize Your Fleet Size
Reduce costs by having a limited number of vehicles for your fleet. Only purchase new fleet vehicles when needed, or use a rental agency to fill any gaps in capacity that arise.
8. Optimize Fleet Usage
Perform regular audits of your logs for unnecessary travel. Communicate any concerns to drivers who should know that you're monitoring their performance.
You can tweak an otherwise existing routine for maximum efficiency by asking about whether two different departments dispatch a single employee for the same job. In order to avoid unnecessary key checks and trips, have your drivers and security make sure they understand who they are checking out before issuing their badges.
9. Have Strong Policies
Documenting individual, clear expectations can make your organization more efficient. Your policies and other human practices set clear expectations for drivers and other members of the company.
There are many ways for you to integrate these practices into your fleet policy suite. For example, one practice to create consistency would be to have a document outlining the following:
Vehicle purchasing policy:
Ensure fleet purchases are always successful
Data collection policy:
Drivers are responsible under the law for recording the types of information collected.
Driver licensing policy:
The importance of driver's licenses and how they can affect fleet management
Maintenance schedules:
With how often vehicles are taken out for service, it allows for better scheduling.
10. Consider an Electronic Fleet Management Solution
Electronic fleet management platforms can easily and effectively automate tedious manual tasks, such as vehicle purchases, planning future investments, and building relationships with customers.
Conclusion
Fleet management is an important aspect of any business. By managing your fleet effectively, you can keep your business running smoothly and avoid any costly mistakes. In this article, we've outlined 10 tips for better fleet management that will help you achieve success in this area. Whether you are a small business owner or a manager of a larger fleet, following these tips will help you to improve your organization and stay safe while driving your company's vehicles. For more updates, deals, tips, and hacks about the fleet management systems follow us on Instagram and Facebook. Thank you for reading till here.
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