With so much commerce being done with trucks right now, your fleet is the lifeline of your business. Everybody is shopping online these days and getting products to fulfillment centers, or directly to the customer depending on the scope of your shipping business needs to be like a well oiled machine these days.
This is the reason that your fleet management system is so crucial. Having an efficient and effective fleet management system to keep your fleet on the road and safe is one of the most important aspects of your business. To assist the system you may want to use fleet management software to help manage and track your fleet. By leveraging solutions designed specifically for large fleet management, your business can better streamline operations, enhance safety, and significantly cut down on expenses.
In this article, we will go over several of the ways that you need to be managing your fleet.
Safety first
The safety of your drivers and others that share the road with them is your top priority. The best way to approach safety of the fleet is to be proactive and not reactive. If you can get out ahead of potential problems then you can avoid a call by a truck accident lawyer in Pittsburgh.
Start out by installing a device that monitors driving behavior. You can then analyse the data and determine if the driver needs to be retrained or disciplined for any risky driving. Knowing how your drivers are driving will go a long way toward keeping the fleet safe.
You should also be doing regular inspections of the vehicles to make sure there aren’t any mechanical problems. You are required to do this after a certain amount of hours anyway, but it is a good idea to schedule check ups in between official maintenance dates.
Give incentives for good driving
In the past, incentives were given to drivers for getting to the destination ahead of time. The more time a driver was able to save, the more of a bonus they got. This encouraged risky driving and often had them manipulating their log books.
These days, it’s more important to reward them for their safe driving. When you’ve been monitoring their driving behavior, you can keep track of who is driving the safest and give them a bonus instead of the driver who cuts corners or goes without sleep to arrive ahead of schedule.
Know your metrics
Analysing data is a great way to see how your fleet is performing. Use some metrics to get a wider understanding and you can make necessary changes.
Using metrics that you set up will help you make good decisions such as when to replace a vehicle. At a certain point you get diminishing returns on your vehicle so use metrics like cost per mile to determine the best time to replace.
Other KPIs to look for are fuel costs which help you target better fuel efficiency. Another metric that often goes under the radar is downtime of vehicles. Understanding how and why your vehicles are not on the road and for how long helps you put practices in place to keep them going. There are several metrics that will help you understand why a vehicle is not running as often as it should.
