The expansion of any business entails an increment in its assets. Your company might have started with one or two vehicles. Still, with business expansion, vehicle acquisitions occur over time resulting in a fleet of vehicles you now have to manage. Although fleet management may seem comparatively unimportant, even the smallest amount of time and capital may determine the success of your business. Therefore, it’s essential that you look at your company-owned vehicles as a fleet, and manage them accordingly to reduce unnecessary expenses and increase overall work efficiency.
A group of 5 or more business-owned vehicles are considered fleets and can include cars, pickup trucks, vans, or other vehicles used for company purposes. Common industries that operate fleets are delivery or maintenance services but can also include corporate businesses. By effectively managing your fleet, you can ensure cost control, prioritize driver safety and safeguard your brand’s reputation. Here are a few ways you can manage your company’s fleet.
1. Reduce Fuel Costs
Fuel costs are the primary expense for fleet management, and by optimizing fleet management, you can minimize fuel costs. However, additional fuel costs can be added to your company’s tab when you don’t track your drivers’ whereabouts and routes. Moreover, reckless driving habits also result in additional fuel costs. When your fleet drivers speed, are idle with their vehicles or accelerate suddenly, excessive fuel is used. These habits waste fuel and add to the wear and tear of the vehicle, which requires frequent maintenance.
Businesses that allow their drivers to use the company vehicles for personal reasons can have excessive fuel usage, resulting in high fleet expenses. By using a fleet tracking device, not only can you keep track of your drivers’ whereabouts but also the routes they take. Moreover, these programs can also help you keep track of fuel top-ups and costs. This way, you can keep an eye on the fuel consumption and costs, and monitor any suspicious activity.
2. Optimize Delivery Routes
Most common fleet services are utilized by delivery and maintenance companies, and to be successful and meet customer demand, they need to be highly efficient with their services. Some fleets operate on fixed routes, while others change their routes every day. No matter which alternative you select, you need to ensure that you select the most optimum route so that both your drivers and customers are satisfied. When you pre-plan optimized routes, you can predict arrival times for your customers and ensure less fuel consumption. Moreover, since you’ll give your drivers sufficient time to perform their delivery, there will be a smaller chance of accidents.
3. Improve Fleet Utilization
If you want your business to succeed, you need to do more with less, or in other words, you need to ensure that you’re utilizing your resources to their maximum. You can improve your fleet utilization by keeping track of each of your vehicles at specific times. You can get different tracking devices and GPS for your truck and other vehicles to record drivers’ exact routes and times. By analyzing reports generated from fleet tracking software, you can develop ways to maximize the utilization of each of your vehicles. You’ll need to track critical metrics including the distance traveled by each vehicle, the unauthorized use of company vehicles after working hours, and drive time versus idle time for every vehicle. This approach will not only help reduce fleet costs but also improve work efficiency.
4. Maintenance And Repair
When managing a fleet, vehicle upkeep, repair, and safety are all critical considerations. If you ignore any of these issues, you’ll have to deal with accidents, increased repair expenses, non-compliance penalties, and vehicle downtime, all of which will result in less income than planned for your firm. Furthermore, deferring vehicle maintenance increases the danger of cars being out of service, reducing work productivity and necessitating the purchase of a new vehicle, which will incur additional costs.
5. Set Goals For Driver Performance
A great way to improve fleet management efficiency is to provide various incentives for your drivers on the condition that they achieve specific goals. These goals can include high fuel efficiency, the number of deliveries per week, regular vehicle inspections, or high driving performance. By holding your drivers to a performance standard, you can ensure driving safety and efficiency.
For businesses that are just getting started, fleet management may appear complicated and best avoided. However, neglecting fleet management would result in a significant loss of resources. Even if your fleet doesn’t have hundreds of cars, effectively managing your five vehicles can save considerable money and help your company grow.
