The 5 Step Guide To Creating A Highly Productive Fleet Workforce For Your Business
Companies that have a highly productive fleet will be more likely to emerge as successful. However, to achieve this feat, fleet managers need to adopt a proactive approach to maximize their resources.
The sheer act of striking the fine balance between staff or vehicle demands with budget cuts and other restraints can be overwhelming. Beginners can start with this article to understand the basics of fleet management. Clearly, as a fleet manager, you have to do several hats to ensure everything goes according to plan.
However, finding the perfect balance may take longer than you would think. Fortunately, we have this 5-step guide that can help you create a highly productive fleet workforce, even if you are a rookie fleet manager!
So let’s check The 5 Step Guide To Creating A Highly Productive Fleet Workforce For Your Business
Table of Contents
1. Making Use of Telematics
Telematics has been no less than a miracle cure for most transportation and logistics woes. Telematics, comprising mainly of a GPS tracking unit, which can help you track your fleet vehicle’s real-time location and grants you a granular overview of the fleet operations.
While real-time tracking of data overcomes issues like wasted mileage and inefficient routes, it also helps the fleet manager gather overall route data. Fleet managers can identify the correlation between the external factors and their effect on the fleet route. Accordingly, you can analyze this data and compile it into actional preventive and corrective measures in set conditions.
For example, if you notice that a particular route gets completed faster in the morning versus the time taken to complete it in the evening, you would dispatch fleet vehicles in the morning for the same route.
At the same time, telematics also sheds light on customer demands, which once again makes it easier for the fleet manager to plan efficient trips and assign driver duties. If you notice a customer requirement where your fleet vehicle is already present, it would be faster and more convenient for you and your customer to assign the trip to the driver.
Telematics adds a layer of flexibility and convenience for everyone, the company, client, and driver, which in the end, boosts productivity.
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2. Manage Fuel Spends
Fuel spend is one of the major budgetary leakages in the fleet management industry. Hence, closely monitoring the fuel spend can improve fleet productivity. For this purpose, companies must establish a reliable fuel program that tracks fuel expenses. Most companies issue company cards to drivers, which they can use to fuel their vehicles.
Such an initiative will help in eliminating the discrepancies arising out of cash purchases. Further, fleet managers can analyze the card statements to assess the amount spent on fuel.
Upon maintaining this record and comparing it with similar routes or route history, fleet managers can detect overspending and make adjustments accordingly. At the same time, using telematics insights along with fuel spends can highlight idling, which negatively impacts fleet productivity. While excessive idling may not necessarily cause a dent in your budget, it can gradually affect your bottom line.
Similarly, overloading your vehicle can also result in fuel inefficiencies. A general rule of thumb states that increasing load by 100 pounds could result in a 1 to 2% decrease in fuel economy.
Therefore, you need to factor in all these considerations to ensure that fuel spends are contained without loss of productivity.
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3. Regular Maintenance and Replacement of Fleet Vehicles
For example, excessive idling of a heavy-duty vehicle for about an hour is equivalent to 80 miles of wear and tear on the vehicle engine. Apart from such poor practices, the regular operation of fleet vehicles may bring down overall productivity.
Hence, an effective fleet maintenance schedule will boost the productivity of your fleet. Quite often, companies and drivers consider fleet maintenance as a chore and prefer skipping it entirely. However, older fleet vehicles need to be well maintained, or the route will cost you more than what you make.
Furthermore, companies must also bear in mind that vehicles can only be repaired to a certain point beyond which they must be discharged from the fleet. Regular replacement of old and obsolete fleet vehicles promotes productivity and prevents any accidents or injuries.
4. Safety as a Priority
Safety has always been one of the foundational cornerstones of fleet management. Unfortunately, it is easy to overlook safety when considering the productivity of your fleet.
However, fleet managers must see the larger picture. Sending your vehicles on the road despite it not being maintained regularly, or despite the risky behavior of the driver could result in crashes or accidents. Naturally, due to such incidents, fleet productivity can take quite a hit.
Any damage caused to a third-party, the fleet vehicle or the driver could involve a series of activities ranging from drug tests, lawsuits, paperwork, and downtime that can bring down the productivity and operations of the fleet. As a result, fleet managers must also consider the safety metrics while accounting for the productivity of the fleet.
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5. Leveraging Data
Technology is promoting efficiency and boosting productivity in a wide range of applications. Naturally, the same also extends to fleet operation and management. Companies are exploiting Big Data to analyze every nitty-gritty of fleet management and extracting the data insights to make monumental decisions, even in real-time.
Those who do not possess the technical know-how to analyze the fleet-related data are involving third-party service providers to carry out a bulk of the legwork. Data-driven insights help get an overview of the fleet health, route efficiency, driver performance, and safety practices, which will contribute to productivity.
Final Thoughts
This concludes our 5-step guide for maintaining fleet productivity. In addition to the above, employee behavior and accountability are two anthropomorphic principles that will contribute to fleet productivity. While these ideologies cannot be taught to the drivers, you can educate them on the same to achieve the desired results.
Make it a point to review the performance of your fleet periodically and set up training programs and safety modules to reinforce what they learn. Keep reminding your drivers of the best practices of the trade, and in return, you will be rewarded with a highly productive fleet.
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