Times are hard for fleet managers and fleet-heavy businesses with the rising cost of fuel. While some of these costs can be passed down to the customers, there is a point when you will have to find ways to reduce your costs either by making changes to the way you do things or by managing your fleet better. You may also start looking at technological solutions you may have dismissed or simply ignored. Let’s take a look at a few simple ways that you can reduce your fleet costs.
Train Your Employees Better
The way your employees drive has such a profound impact on how much your fleet will cost. Irresponsible drivers reduce the lifespan of their vehicles and use more fuel. This is why you need to start monitoring their habits better through telematics and ensure that they have more efficient driving habits.
Irresponsible drivers are more crash prone too. Crashes have been estimated to cost businesses $26,000 on average for each, and only a few crashes can be enough for a business to go under. So, if you’re serious about reducing your costs and want to have safer drivers on the road representing your brand, it would be a good idea to invest in fleet driver training.
Retread Instead of Replacing Your Tires
Retreading your tires could allow you to add lots of miles to them instead of having to replace them. The cost of new tires can go up pretty fast if you have lots of vehicles, and even more if you have specialized vehicles like vans or trucks. Retreading costs about 30% of the costs of new tires and will allow you to drive up to 120,000 miles before needing a replacement, so consider the option right now if you haven’t already.
Cut Vehicles
If you have vehicles that you’re not using often, you should check if you could unload some of them. Doing so could allow you to lower your costs by as much as $8,000 per year. If you don’t think you can remove vehicles, check if some of your employees could use the same ones. If you have people running the evening and day shifts, for instance, you could see if they could share vehicles.
Be Smarter with Your Routes
You’ll also need to manage your routes better if you’ve been neglecting that part lately. Many apps will allow you to monitor your employees and allow you to combine trips for better efficiency. UPS, for instance, uses a system called ORION to track its drivers’ routes and make changes that can reduce mileage and fuel consumption.
One of the things they did is eliminate left turns on their routes. This may seem like a small thing, but they figured that a lot of money was spent on idling waiting for left turns, and by having their drivers only make right turns, they were able to significantly improve both delivery times and fuel consumption. This is the kind of thing you could do if you took route monitoring and planning more seriously.
All of these tips should help you significantly reduce your fleet’s operational costs. The most important part is keeping a close eye on your drivers and assets, and always making efforts to improve everyone’s efficiency.
