5 powerful fleet management tips

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Whether you have a fleet of 15 vehicles or 500, managing a fleet is serious business. And if you want to be successful over the long term, you must develop a strategic, well-documented plan. The question is, do you have one?

5 Fleet Management Tips

Fleet management is a challenging job. You’re tasked with juggling dozens of responsibilities at once, including maximizing efficiency, lowering costs, ensuring safety, and reducing liability. Trying to figure out which tasks take priority in any given situation can be tough. Plus, on top of all of that, there are external factors like constantly changing technology, new laws and regulations, and evolving compliance requirements. 

If you’re going to successfully manage your fleet, it requires a very disciplined strategy. Here are a few tips and principles that may prove helpful:

• Hire the Right People

We can talk about tools, processes, and systems until we’re blue in the face, but if you don’t have the right people on your team, your fleet management efforts will never be where they need to be. Thus it all starts with proper hiring.

When hiring fleet managers – or even just drivers or mechanics – you need people who understand the big picture. They should be self-driven, motivated people who understand the importance of cutting costs.

• Implement Fleet Maintenance Software

Trying to manually track all of your fleet maintenance tasks and records isn’t practical or efficient. You need to implement fleet maintenance software like Route4Me to automate and streamline.

While there are lots of good options on the market, Cetaris Fleet is arguably the best. It has a number of powerful and dynamic features, such as warranty and core capture, preventative maintenance, and full system integration. This allows you to achieve the lowest possible operating costs and keep vehicles safe and compliant as they age. On top of that, data flows can be automated across enterprise software, while still maintaining impressive accuracy with built-in validation. 

• Emphasize Preventative Maintenance

Nothing is more costly or time-consuming for a fleet management program than being reactionary with your maintenance. The more you’re able to get ahead of the curve with preventative maintenance, the better things will be. 

Good preventative maintenance is swift and proactive. It consists of a combination of scheduled servicing, inspections, and strategic repairs to prevent small issues from becoming much bigger problems in the future. 

Preventative maintenance schedules should be determined based on the vehicle make and model. Some vehicles are known to break down at specific intervals, while others are relatively durable and only need occasional inspections. Being intimately familiar with your fleet will help you make wise choices in this regard.

• Utilize Your Assets

Proper fleet optimization is all about using what you’ve got. In other words, you need to maximize utilization. Unfortunately, most fleets do a poor job of this. And though they might think they’re being resourceful by setting aside certain vehicles or parts, they’re actually doing the fleet a disservice.

When assets go unutilized, they sit in storage and collect dust. They’re expensive to store and become targets for vandalism or theft. Not only that, but when you finally decide to use them, it requires extensive effort to get them up and running. 

Either get rid of unused assets or put them into use. There’s no sense in sitting on a bunch of assets that you don’t need. 

• Establish Clear Vehicle Replacement Cycles

Remove as much subjectivity as you can from decision making processes. One way to do this is by establishing concrete rules regarding when vehicles are replaced. 

Generally speaking, vehicles stop operating at their optimal efficiency around 70,000 miles. (And because of the frequent usage, fleet vehicles may only get to 50,000 miles before they drop off.) This is another reason why it’s important to become intimately familiar with your vehicles. Establish clear vehicle replacement cycles and stick with them. This disciplined approach will help you over the long term. 

Improve Your Fleet Management

Proper fleet management can make or break your team’s productivity, efficiency, and profitability. And though it might fly under the radar when compared to big picture items like sales, marketing, and innovation, improvements in this area of your business could set you up for massive growth down the road. If nothing else, it’ll give you a distinct competitive advantage.