Fleet management is not an easy task, especially when you have to keep an eye on expenses, vehicle tracking, maintenance, and the safety of your staff. As a fleet manager, keeping the fleet running efficiently and within the operational budget are core parts of your responsibilities. Thanks to emerging new technologies, the jobs of fleet managers have been simplified to a great extent. From tackling maintenance problems to tracking vehicles and economizing fuel, there are tools for fleet managers to boost their productivity. Here are the top ways fleet managers can run their trucking companies effectively.
- Preventative maintenance (PM)
Fleet companies make their profits from keeping their vehicles on the road. Carrying out preventive maintenance practices helps trucking companies spot hidden issues before they escalate to cause serious problems. Schedule your collection of vehicles to undergo routine maintenance procedures like tire replacement, change of oil filters, and brake pads. When you maintain your vehicles regularly, you will eventually reduce downtime and improve efficiency. Statistics show that each hour of a preventive maintenance procedure saves about three to eight work hours. Periodic servicing of your fleet also allows you to monitor how their spare parts wear out with time.
- Use telematics
The last few years have seen advances in global positioning systems (GPS technology) revolutionize the transport industry. Thanks to those innovations, vehicle tracking systems, and telematics now offer fleet managers the best resources they need to drive their businesses forward. Using telematics, fleet managers can sit in remote offices and monitor the location of their vehicles, driver habits, and general performance of their vehicles. They can observe events in real-time, such as braking habits, acceleration, and speed. Planning of routes can be done more intelligently, and thereby enabling drivers to follow optimized paths to reduce fuel consumption, risks of accidents, and also eliminate driver misbehaviour. To further improve freight efficiency as a truck driver, you can use a load restraint system on your truck to securely fasten your goods.
- Go paperless
In this digital era, migrating to paperless platforms is a good decision. Compared to paper files, digital documents are simpler to create, and they take very little storage spaces. Digital files can also be accessed 24/7 from any corner of the world. Fleet managers are encouraged to switch to digital documentation. Filling paper documents takes a lot of time, and can also create room for errors to occur. For example, a paper document can easily go missing without a trace. Technicians may make mistakes when they are recording their hours of service, and if such mistakes are captured on paper files, correcting them can be challenging. Instead of dealing with hard copies, fleet companies can adopt software for technicians to record their services digitally. Information on vehicle warranty, insurance, and other vital data can be saved online for future references.
From this article, it is clear to see that the advent of fleet management software is indeed helping fleet managers to improve the efficiency of their transport businesses.
