As fleet owners, it must be your priority to maximize uptime and reduce costs while managing the fleet. However, if you have a diverse range of vehicles and equipment, optimizing the fleet life cycle may get challenging.
An optimized lifecycle strategy must be based on specific operational needs and understanding maintenance requirements, historical data analysis and potential resale value. It eliminates guesswork and helps you save money in the long run.
Here are some tips you must follow.
- Measure Everything
You need metrics to monitor progress, but they will just be a series of numbers if you don’t measure anything useful. In order to ensure effective fleet operations, you have to measure everything that matters. Once you know the measurements, you will have a good understanding of what needs to be improved. Some metrics that provide good insight into vehicle and fleet performance include cost per kilometer/mile, total cost trend and operating cost summary. Measuring and monitoring relevant data can directly impact your fleet.
- Digital Documenting
Storing piles and piles of folders is a thing of the bygone era. Now you can store everything in a digital format, that too at minimal cost. Every single document such as invoices, receipts, work orders, photos, product manuals, employee records, etc., can be stored in one central digital location. This allows you to instantly access any data from any internet-connected device, from any location.
- Don’t Overload
Don’t stuff everything onto the trucks and trailers just because it fits. If you forcefully fit in everything heavy, you will be overloading the vehicle. Overweight vehicles are moving safety threats, putting the drivers and others on the road at risk. Moreover, they will cause excess wear and tear in the vehicle. You may even need to replace brakes and tyres more often than the manufacturer’s recommended intervals if the vehicle is overloaded. Understand the vehicle payload requirement and use industrial weighing scales to ensure you don’t exceed the weight limit and avoid overweight fines.
- Schedule Regular Maintenance Programs
When the fleet is maintained properly, you will face fewer unscheduled repairs and downtime. This will keep your drivers more productive on the roads, driving safe vehicles. Some preventive maintenance tasks include oil changes, vehicle safety checks and tyre inspection/rotation. Make maintenance as effortless and accessible as possible for all the employees. Doing this will ensure that your fleet is maintained and kept on schedule.
- Improve Optimal Vehicle Utilization
Maintaining high-mileage operations would be ideal but it isn’t always practical. It is important to utilize the vehicles properly for maintaining long-term maintenance cost and vehicle health. Understand the relative utilization of specific vehicles as it may help you ensure that all the vehicles are being used equally instead of going through some vehicles faster than others. Optimal vehicle utilization may also help you make future purchasing decisions.
- Act Ahead
Don’t wait for disaster to strike in order to take safety actions. Get ahead of potential problems and try to mitigate any risks that can endanger the lives of your employees or affect the company in any way. Be proactive and understand what is missing or what needs to be added to safety measures. Don’t disregard the use of devices like driver behavior monitoring apps, dash cameras or industrial weighing scales as they can help in studying patterns or identifying issues concerning weight and driver behavior. This will help you pre-empt problems before they become serious safety risks.
Taking small steps along the way will ensure that your fleet runs effectively for a long time.
