Fleet efficiency is a core fleet management aspect that offers excellent potential for businesses to optimize their processes and improve their profit margins.
Improving fleet efficiency ensures sustainability and saves you money. To identify the gaps in your fleet performance, you should have full insights into your processes. Data from your assets, including drivers, trucks, trailers, and the back office, can help determine your goals and metrics to determine sub-optimal performance. Outlined below are five ways to improve fleet efficiency.
1. Leverage fleet dash cams
A fleet dash cam enables trucking companies to see what their drivers are doing right, what they can improve, and the road conditions they go through every day. They’re the main data collection point in fleet management systems, and they provide incident reports to fleet managers and drivers. Fleet managers can optimize delivery routes based on road traffic, weather conditions, and other factors impacting delivery services, thanks to the video recordings. The incident reporting system measures driver performance, including braking pressure, distracted driving, lane departure, and average speeds. This can help you improve driver efficiency via training.
2. Automate data entry
Manual data entries usually slow down fleet managers. Using spreadsheets to enter expense data, work orders, and other information is poor time usage and doesn’t offer a detailed view of your operations. A fleet management system eliminates long data entry hours from your day. Managers can get real-time updates from their teams and access the data from integrated systems fuel cards or telematics and GPS. Besides reducing your time entering data, fleet management software reduces your data’s surface time. Using configurable dashboards and solid reporting abilities, you can closely monitor fleet performance and operations.
3. Track fuel consumption
Fuel is a significant expense for any fleet company. This is essential to attain fuel economy, ensuring your company’s sustainability. Tracking fuel consumption is an effective way to improve fleet efficiency. Ensure that the miles driven per vehicle and trip align with the fuel consumed. Should they not correspond, assess your fleet for fuel fraud, driving style, or excessive idling. A fleet management system can help you get the metrics that can help resolve fuel issues.
4. Measure the right metrics
You should measure the right metrics to optimize your fleet’s efficiency, increase margins, and control costs. Measure cost-efficiency metrics, such as fuel efficiency and economy per driver/ per vehicle, asset utilization rate, maintenance schedule, and fleet productivity. Consider tracking safety metrics, including speeding tickets, brake lifecycle, and accidents. Don’t forget about the compliance metrics like on-time delivery rate, available hours of service, and correct, complete and timely HOS reporting. Measuring these metrics can help you identify what isn’t working to improve efficiency.
5. Maintain preventive maintenance practices
Vehicle breakdowns are usually due to poor fleet maintenance. Maintaining regular maintenance checks can help avoid sudden, costly repairs to keep your fleet in good condition. Creating and sticking to a regular preventive maintenance plan is a proactive way of improving fleet efficiency by reducing or preventing downtime and increasing your vehicle’s lifespan. A fleet maintenance software helps fleet managers help you recognize under and over-utilized, schedule preventive maintenance, and track warranties and repairs.
Endnote
Your fleet efficiency directly impacts your company’s profitability and success. Use these tips to improve fleet efficiency.