Fleet management is becoming more and more important in businesses, particularly as businesses look to find more ways to save money.
Mileage Monitoring Systems
Technology is an important part of managing a fleet of vehicles and their drivers. Mileage monitoring systems where drivers enter postcode to postcode details of their journey mean that you can find out exactly where and which vehicles are being driven.
Knowledge Manager at the Energy Saving Trust says that “This is where you can start to see individual vehicle and driver efficiency levels.” Adding, “It isn’t unusual for claimed mile-age to reduce once these systems are put in place.”
Tracking vehicles has an immediate impact on mileage, as drivers know that they are being monitored.
Routing and Modelling Software
This is being used by councils up and down the country to optimise fleet movement in areas such as refuse collection and street sweeping. This will work better for predictable journeys as opposed to reactive ones, but it needs to be consulted on with the drivers too. A computer won’t necessarily know everything that teams who actually work on the jobs, so an integrated approach is necessary.
Challenging your fleet drivers to think about the routes they are taking is an alternative option if you can’t afford new software. Consider encouraging forward planning and combining journeys to make driving more efficient.
Fuel Management Software
This will ensure that your drivers are driving as economically as they can. Fuel management systems like the ones from Commercial Fuel Solutions, mean that your drivers are monitored for the amount of fuel they use, so you can identify the drivers who are good at saving fuel and those who are not. You can look at their driving styles and look to emulate this with all your drivers, or not as the case may be.
There are lots of ways to save fuel, including training your drivers in driving economically, and installing speed limiters and rev limiters.
Unnecessary Weight
Many operators use vehicles as mobile workstations, and they often accumulate extra items like tools and equipment over time that are rarely used. This extra weight will impact on the economy of the journey. Make sure that your fleet is regularly emptying their vehicles to ensure that they only have what’s needed.
While all these things individually have a small impact on the costs of running a fleet, cumulatively they can have a huge impact, and could mean a saving of 10-15%.