Good fleet management involves improving safety and compliance as well as managing the everyday vehicle operations. This covers many different tasks, but the common denominator is that you are always seeking to save costs and run your fleet more efficiently.
The New Year brings fresh challenges and a new set of objectives and targets, so how can you improve the efficiency of your fleet in 2024? Here we have outlined a number of ways you can make dramatic improvements to the efficiency of your fleet, and deliver successful bottom line results by the end of the year.
Manage Fuel Costs
You can’t do much about the unit cost of fuel, or electricity if you are utilising electric vehicles, but you can put several processes in place to monitor fuel costs and control how fuel is used. These include:
- GPS trackers to monitor where drivers are in real-time
- Training – to improve driver behaviour in terms of practices which waste fuel, such as hard braking, harsh acceleration and idling
- Journey planning to find more efficient routes
- Fuel cards – arranging cost-effective deals with certain fuel providers
Preventive maintenance
It always makes sense to avoid unforeseen costs, so scheduling service and maintenance for your fleet vehicles will reduce the possibility of costly problems occurring. You can replace parts as and when needed, rather than after an emergency breakdown, which ensures a higher percentage utilisation of your cars on the road. Preventive maintenance will also extend the lifetime of a vehicle and also improves safety compliance in terms of MOT costs and accident costs.
Invest in software
There are various software tools the fleet manager can use to improve efficiencies, including:
- Journey planning – finding the most efficient routes, not just in terms of finding the fastest route, but to avoid traffic delays, to consolidate multiple drops into one journey and to plan pick-ups so vehicles aren’t returning to the depot empty (necessitating another vehicle to go out on a collection)
- Fleet communications – having good communications with your drivers means you have reliable, real-time information on their location, to help with customer relations and when deliveries will be made. You can also communicate changes to delivery schedules and monitor driver behaviour. Mobile apps are perhaps the most practical way of doing this in terms of connectivity and being able to share information.
- Analysis – software packages which allow the fleet manager to monitor fuel costs, mileage, on-time deliveries, driver behaviour etc provide accurate figures upon which improvement policies and procedures can be based.
Vehicle sourcing
The fleet manager should be fully conversant with the best current leasing deals, the most suitable vehicles for certain operations and the most cost-effective ways to finance vehicles. These can all add up to saving the business significant amounts of working capital and available cash.
Training
A fleet manager should always be looking at training opportunities to ensure drivers are fully conversant with current processes and compliant with current legislation. So training can include efficient driving techniques as well as safe driving techniques. This can lead to fuel cost savings in addition to savings on accident management and insurance costs.
Analyse
While we have already mentioned the option of investing in analysis software, it is necessary to stress the importance of overall analysis of the fleet operation. Because the fleet manager is judged on efficiencies and cost savings, it is vital that they have complete visibility of the fleet; its vehicles, its drivers and its operations. Only by doing this can the fleet manager make accurate judgement calls on cost savings, and set achievable targets for annual objectives, as well as being able to monitor progress against these targets. The fleet department should be striving for continual improvement in order to stay ahead of the competition, but also so it doesn’t become complacent and is staying ahead of the rate of inflation and the rate at which various technologies are improving.
Total fleet management from Total Motion
If you contact Total Motion we can arrange a package to advise you on the best ways to run your fleet more efficiently. Our advisors have a proven track record of transformational improvements for business in many different industry sectors, so we can work with you to find the most practical and effective solutions to improve the efficiency of your fleet operations. If you contact us today, 2024 can be the start of changing your fleet department and delivering performance results to improve the bottom line for your business.
