An Overview of the Fleet Management Process
The Vehicle
One of the simplest questions to ask when you’re considering the efficiency of your whole fleet is ‘what vehicles are you using?’ Obviously, utilising vehicles with a good base fuel economy is a strong foundation for the vehicle selection process, but what else do you need to consider? The vehicles in your fleet also need to have a track record for reliability, as repairs are potentially expensive, and a damaged vehicle that can’t pull a load is a dead weight on the balance sheet.
The Fleet
Good fleet management is naturally all about the fleet itself. Depending on your specific industry, you need to make sure you have a range of vehicles suitable for the job at hand. After all, there’s no point sending a fuel-guzzling HGV when a van will do the job just fine. Similarly, if your cargo requires specialist vehicles to transport, such as tankers, you need to ensure that you have a good spread of these vehicles in your fleet. Having a policy in place for replacing vehicles once they pass a certain age threshold will help to keep breakdowns to a minimum, and a good fleet manager will need to balance the cost of replacing vehicles against the potential disaster of a vital cargo being left on the side of the road after a breakdown.
The Drivers
Having a good team of drivers is an often-understated facet of good fleet management. Managing the team may seem like a HR responsibility, but the fleet manager needs to be aware of the skills and limitations of the people using the fleet on a daily basis. Continual improvement of a driver’s skills, which can be attained through attending further specialist driver training, should be something the fleet manager is supportive of. A driver with the skill and knowledge gained from these courses can help to cut fuel usage by driving in the most economical fashion possible, relative to the vehicle in use. Over time, these small savings add up to make a big difference, and a properly managed and well-driven fleet will perform impressively, both on the road and on the balance sheet.
The Fuel
Fuel management is a key aspect of good fleet management; the best vehicle management process in the world won’t deliver the savings you need if your fuel management is haphazard and inefficient. This is where we come in; as experts in the design and installation of fuel management systems, we make sure that fuel management is something you never need to worry about again. Our innovative range of hardware and software delivers the data that fleet managers need to keep track of fuel usage across the fleet, from daily usage to low fuel level alerts. We can take the hassle out of fuel management, and let you worry about the important things.
We hope that this overview of the fleet management process has helped to narrow down the aspects that you need to worry about, and has given you some insight into further avenues of investigation. Maintaining a healthy, efficient fleet is not a simple task by any measure, but by taking advantage of our extensive fuel management systems you can rest assured that your fuel dispensing and management is being taken care of in the most efficient way possible, without you having to lift a finger. To find out more about how Fueltek’s range of innovative systems can be of use, get in touch using the details on our contact page, or call us on 01254 291 391 now.
