5 Tips for Fleet Managers to Drive Impressive Results.

Preventive VS Corrective Maintenance

The amount you spend for repairing your vehicle cuts an immense figure from your fleet budget in a year. It would be better to maintain your vehicle than to pay for the repairs. Generally, an unexpected vehicle breakdown on the road causes enormous money, four times what it takes for the same repair if done in the shop. Of course, certain repairs are expected, but the sudden breakdowns and unexpected repairs also cause a considerable loss in time. The most effective way to avoid these roadside breakdowns is the preventive method of maintenance. Proper maintenance of the vehicle regularly helps you prevent such unanticipated breakdowns and saves you time and huge money.

Neglecting maintenance is the primary cause of unforeseen breakdowns and expenses. In most cases, fleets do not maintain vehicles owning to the busy schedule, which causes an inevitable breakdown. Generally, waiting till something fails is the major mistake done instead of fixing it before it happens. You intend to take the vehicle to the shop only when it breakdown or nearing a colossal failure. We choose " corrective maintenance" over proactive methods.

Investing in preventive maintenance is often considered to be beneficial in one way or the other. Preventive maintenance requires your effort and time. But it's better to spend this way rather than paying off for unanticipated expenses, which causes a massive rift of money and downtime. The other benefit of preventive maintenance is knowing the due time of service, which helps you plan accordingly.

Preventive maintenance is an approach that benefits you in numerous ways. It shortens the appalling expenditures and sudden breakdown. In turn, you'll be amused by the flow of income if you cut off these unexpected expenses by investing in regular maintenance.

Smart Vehicle Purchase

The value of a vehicle is decreased with their age and continuous usage. Though fleet managers believe that the value of a vehicle will eventually be zero once they ran out of their lifetime, it's not true.

Consider depreciation rates while purchasing new vehicles. If vehicles are brought by considering their residual value when they are out of the fleet. It drives some good money to the overall bottom line.

Investing in a vehicle that maintains its value is a great option. Choose your vehicle after checking the depreciation calculator, and also invest in the maintenance of your vehicle wisely.

After five to six years, your thoughtful approach will reward you by recouping 20% of the purchase price of your vehicle. In some cases, if the maintenance is done right, you could reap more rewards. At least 10% of the purchase price of your vehicle even after ten years of service.

Optimising Your Fleet Route

Structured route planning is the best way to avoid significant causes of unbudgeted fuel consumption. The fuel consumption is caused due to excessive traffic, non-organized routes, and road blockades. We can restrain such causes by an automated route planning.

The constraints to be considered while route planning are

• Time of the day
• Sunrise/ sunset
• One-ways
• Traffic
• Multiple turns
• Load/ cubic volume/ height/ weight

The amount of time spent on manual route planning is exceptionally high. Compared to computers, there are numerous factors to be examined for humans to be better and faster. Most of the time, your route's proficiency may not be as excellent as it seems to be.

But before route planning, the appropriate information is necessary as it can minimize the usage of fuel, helps in understanding the miles driven, the time utilized for driving, the number of stops made, and even the profit. The more you know the information, the lesser time you will spend on route optimization.

With software-optimized routes, the destination, ETA, and traffic jams are predicted, ensuring the best routes every time. The comparison between the planned vs actual performance is another benefit of using the software. It also shows the next best alternative routes in case of any unpredicted traffics or delays.

Constant Tracking of Driver Performance

Excessive wear and tear expenses occur due to unprofessional driving behaviors such as speeding, sudden braking, harsh acceleration, and idling. Consumption of fuels increases due to speeding, long idling.

These circumstances can be avoided by installing a tracking system in every vehicle to monitor and ensure safe driving and to keep in touch with the drivers and vehicle in real-time. It helps in foreseeing the erroneous and rectifying it beforehand.

Choosing a system with superb reporting and analytics is the best option. Mapping out the actual stops, speed, route, and fuel use helps in tracking vehicles in real-time and improvise fleet operations.

Electric Cars – Invest in The Future.

The ideology of electric cars is more expensive than those with ICE is a complete myth. Actually, the cost of electric vehicles is lesser than the cost of an average new ICE Vehicles in the US.

According to the US department of energy in their latest survey, the average energy cost of electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles is $50-80/ month, which is extremely less than those with ICE. In fact, that's easily 10 times the average fuel cost of ICE fleets.

Shifting from gas-powered vehicles to electric vehicles saves a huge amount of money annually.

The maintenance expenses of electric vehicles over ICE vehicles are comparably less. As for the ownership of the fully electric fleet, the cost is, in fact, less than the ownership of an ICE fleet.

To Summarize

The biggest obstacle for all the fleet managers is to minimize the cost, using the limited resources, and attaining more profit. The right tools and methods are shared in this article, resulting in significant improvement in your fleet operation.