Tips for Better Fleet Management
Even though technology has come a long way, the way we transport products has stayed the same for the most part. You still load products into trucks and drive them to the correct location. That isn’t likely to change in the future, either.
That’s why the fleet management market is so big. It has a total market value of $20.6 billion.
However, some fleet managers don’t do things right and waste a lot of money running inefficient fleets. Having the right strategy to manage your fleet is critical to efficient operations. Use the four fleet management tips below to get the most from your truck drivers.
Create a Maintenance Schedule
Maintenance is one of the most critical parts of an efficient truck fleet. Unfortunately, not every fleet manager does enough to maintain the equipment. That leads to a fleet that constantly has vehicles in maintenance.
Every vehicle not on the road is lost revenue. If you want to save time and save money, you need as many vehicles on the road as possible. The best maintenance tips you can take advantage of are the ones that help you create a schedule for vehicle maintenance.
Optimize Your Fleet Size
You need the space to store vehicles and enough drivers to optimize your fleet usage. Unfortunately, when building a fleet, it’s easy to overestimate your demand and alternative vehicles. You have higher expenses and storage requirements for unused vehicles when that happens.
Try to keep only enough vehicles for the drivers you need and a few extras for out-of-service vehicles. Doing this will help you control your expenses and keep your drivers on the road.
Encourage Good Drive Behavior
Your drivers are responsible for a lot when on the road. They have to avoid accidents to keep the cargo safe and practice responsible vehicle usage to keep fuel consumption down. Unfortunately, that doesn’t stop some drivers from driving recklessly.
They’ll take too many chances and increase the likelihood of accidents happening. Poor driving skills can also drive up your fuel cards. That’s why it pays to inform your drivers of proper road behavior. Train them to drive safely and use monitoring tools to ensure people follow the rules.
If you install live streaming dashcams in your trucks, that will indeed have a significant impact on driver behavior.
Track Your Routes
Great routes are critical for an effective fleet. Every minute your fleet vehicles are on the road costs gas and driver wages. You can’t afford your fleet vehicles to spend time not in use, and stuck on ineffective routes.
Tracking your fleet routes will help you determine where your vehicles are wasting time. From there, you can create optimized routes that help you get to the target destination more quickly. This fleet tracking device is a great product that will help you keep track of your vehicles. Some programs can automate this process, so make sure you investigate your options.
Put These Fleet Management Tips Into Place Today
You can’t afford a poor-performing fleet when so much money is on the line. You’ll end up losing money and wreck the profit margin for your business.
Use the fleet management tips above to create a more efficient fleet that gets products to your customers on time. Head back to the blog to learn more ideas that will help you optimize your entire business operation.
