Many businesses have a need for a fleet of company vehicles. Whether these vehicles are an essential component of your business, or you need them for your employees so they can do their job, you need to manage your company’s fleet effectively, for the benefits of all involved, including your company.
Proper fleet management is essential for ensuring that any vehicles within your business last as long as possible. Proper fleet management will also keep you on top of routine maintenance and will identify and fix issues with your vehicles before they appear.
If you are looking for a more effective fleet management strategy, here’s what you need to keep in mind.
Be Proactive About Training
Don’t wait until something goes wrong. Start training your drivers on how to avoid basic situations that are common occurrences. Do your best to stay ahead of the curve by providing your workers with the safety measures that they need. learning to avoid the potential problem before it occurs is always better than fixing it once it has already occurred.
You want to emphasize to your workers that when they are driving a company vehicle, they need to treat it with care and respect since is part of their responsibility and part of the job.
There are a number of features and technologies you can use to encourage your workers to be careful when driving your vehicles. These include hands-free devices that discourage them from using their phones while driving. Apps and other in-cab equipment for monitoring driver behavior and attentiveness, and other features that you may find helpful.
Preventing issues before they arise is the best way of ensuring that they don’t adversely affect your business.
Stay on Top of your Admin
Whatever arrangement you have within your company, and how vehicles can be used by your employees, it is vital that you stay on top of the admin work associated with each vehicle.
This means making sure that every vehicle is kept properly maintained, insured. If vehicles are loaned out to workers on a short-term basis before being returned, then you need to come up with a system that makes it easy to find the vehicle that you are looking for efficiently and quickly. You should also be able to find out at a glance whether a particular vehicle is going to need an MOT soon.
It’s easier to manage the insurance of your vehicles with a single policy that covers every vehicle in your fleet. You can find fleet insurance providers online using the price comparison website Quotezone.co.uk. They make it quick and simple to find the cheapest fleet insurance available through a variety of different providers.
Make Maintenance of your Fleet Effortless
Your people are busy, so rather than leaving it to them to decide when to service their vehicles you should make regular scheduled maintenance appointments and inspections part of your workers’ general routine.
Ideally, your workers should be aware of how far away they are from their next inspection every time they turn on their vehicle.
Ensure your Guidelines are Clear
The company guidelines should make it absolutely clear to your workers what the terms and conditions are. Whether the vehicle will be available for them to use in a personal capacity or is strictly for work. It is vital that they understand what their rights and obligations are as both custodians and operators of the vehicles.
Instead of relying on unreliable analog methods of record-keeping, consider investing in some proper fleet management software. Fleet management software will automatically remind you when vehicles need servicing and can automate large portions of your vehicle maintenance procedures.
Measure the Right Metrics
In determining how well you are currently managing your fleet, you need to measure the right statistics. Decide what is most important thing for your company. Is it the fuel efficiency, regular inspections or total time on the road? Think about what metrics will serve as the best indicators of success for your company.
Effective fleet management is essential to ensure that you’re investing your money wisely. The money you invest in establishing and maintaining your fleet isn’t going to waste.
Looking after a fleet of vehicles doesn’t have to be difficult. The trick is to make sure that you stay on top of everything.
With modern fleet management software, it’s easy to automatically keep track of the health of each vehicle and to automatically receive an alert when the time comes for routine maintenance. The better you manage your fleet, the more effective and reliable it will be.