If you own a logistics company or a company with many cars, it is in your best interest to manage your truck fleet as efficiently as possible. When your business depends on your vehicles and their drivers performing at the highest level, you will have to improve your fleet management.
Fleet management seems to be getting more expensive every year hence increasing operating costs and reducing profitability. The best way to ensure that you keep fleet management costs down is to develop more intelligent fleet management practices.
The following are seven tips to help you make your fleet management smarter:
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Track Everything
The only way for you to improve anything is by measuring your performance, and the same goes for fleet management. If you want to have more intelligent fleet management, you need to track every aspect of your fleet.
Collect as much data as you can about your trucks, including fuel usage, maintenance schedules, vehicle performance, driver performance, and warranties. It is about collecting data and ensuring it is good data that will help improve fleet management.
There are metrics you track that will be universal, but there will also be metrics specific to your company or fleet.
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Purchasing Requirements
Fleet management begins way before you have trucks on the road; it starts before buying the vehicles. Standardizing your fleet purchase requirements is an excellent way for you to manage your fleet cost-effectively in the long term.
Many companies allow different department heads or offices to do their purchasing. However, it would be much more effective if a single fleet manager made all purchases.
If it is impossible to have purchases done by a single manager, you should have a standardized checklist of everything a car in your fleet should have.
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Use a GPS Tracker
One of the best tools you can use for wiser fleet management is a GPS tracker. A GPS tracker is a tool that will help you with a lot of metrics that you need to track besides distance and location.
There are various types of GPS trackers available today. However, magnetic vehicle tracking devices are the best choice. They offer ample standby time, quick reporting capabilities and can hold a charge for weeks.
Moreover, you can always locate your vehicle in real-time if it is stolen or need it for another purpose. The information provided by a GPS tracker will be precious in helping you manage your company’s fleet smartly.
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Digital Compliance
Despite the advances in technology, there are still many companies that handle their compliance physically using paper. Doing so makes fleet management inefficient and cumbersome.
If you want to manage your fleet more smartly, you should make the change to digital compliance. Fleet management software should help in this regard. Many fleet drivers struggle with the paperwork, which can also be damaged and ruined before drivers can submit the forms.
It would be best if you embraced electronic logging devices, which certainly make compliance more effortless and can even file and submit the information themselves. The safety, organization, and efficiency of files are better with digital than with physical compliance.
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Preventive Maintenance
It would be best if you never waited until your vehicles have serious issues before you perform repairs. You should be more proactive in your approach and ensure that vehicles in your fleet are always in good condition. It is much more intelligent and cheaper to perform preventive maintenance on your fleet than paying for major repairs.
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Optimize Your Fleet
One of the benefits of collecting data about your fleet is that it can help you optimize it. You can optimize both the size and usage of your fleet.
The larger the fleet size, the harder it is to manage it and the more inefficient its use. Therefore, a small fleet size is optimal for most companies.
You should have just enough capacity to handle your needs. It would be best if you also had a plan for any unforeseen requirements.
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Improve Driver Performance
The drivers of vehicles in your fleet are essential to its management. Therefore, a great tip to smartly manage your fleet is to improve your drivers’ performance.
The data you collect about your fleet and its drivers will help you improve driver performance. It would be best if you also incentivized the drivers that show safe driving skills and good performance.
Managing a fleet as a business owner or fleet manager is a challenging task. There is so much to account for that you can easily be overwhelmed. However, with the tips above, you can manage your fleet smartly and benefit your company.