For many businesses, their fleet is both their greatest asset and their biggest liability. They need an active fleet of vehicles to deliver to customers and prepare construction sites, but those same vehicles can often prove uneconomical, simply because of how expensive they are to buy and maintain. Even fleet operators who think that their fleets are running as smoothly as possible can face a rude awakening when things go wrong.
Here are some steps that you can take to avoid your fleet putting the brakes on your enterprise.
Downsize Your Fleet
Downsizing might sound completely counterintuitive; after all, why would anybody want to downsize a fleet? Wouldn’t that result in fewer orders fulfilling and less happy customers? In some circumstances it could. But the trick here is not to think about the number of vehicles you have in your fleet, but the extent to which they are being used. You could have twenty diggers at your depot, but you might have noticed that their utilisation rate – the actual time they are in use as a percentage of the time they could be in use – is only 5 percent. In these situations, it’s a good idea to think about how you could allocate your precious capital better. Rather than having a bunch of diggers sitting in the depot unused, get rid of some of them, and then timetable each individual digger to reduce your capital repayment costs.
Use Fuel Cards
Here’s another way to reduce costs when you’ve got a fleet: use fuel cards. Getting drivers to buy fuel using special accounts, or having them pay out of their own money and then reimbursing them, is a time-consuming and complicated process that is potentially riddled with errors.
Instead, why not use fuel cards? Fuel cards were originally designed to centralise the process of paying for fuel and to make the lives of staff easier. Drivers are able to fill up using a fuel card, and debits are made automatically to your account, without you having to go through a load of paperwork first.
Maintenance
Keeping your fleet in the best condition possible should be a top priority for fleet managers. Not only will regular maintenance ensure that vehicle operators remain safe, but it also shows your customers and the rest of the world that your company is clean, well-kept and reliable.
For most managers, maintenance is their biggest cost when it comes to their fleet, so it’s important to stay on top of it at all times. The most common areas where you’ll see issues is in areas like the fuel injection system, the exhaust, the gearbox and the tyres. Keep an eye on each of these areas and maintain a log that details when each of the parts was last serviced.
It’s also worth having a word with drivers themselves about driving style and how to drive in a way that preserves the equipment. Make sure that your colleagues know just how valuable the equipment they use is, and incentivise driving styles that preserve the tyres and the engine.