5 Tips to improve fleet efficiency

Improving fleet efficiency in 2020

There are several reasons why improving your fleet’s efficiency will become increasingly important over the coming years. The first is that you can quickly begin saving money and increase your margins by focusing on the small details. As margins remain under pressure and transport in a whole is faced more and more with the rapidly changing mobility climate, optimising your fleet will be key to become or remain profitable.

Sustainability is the second reason, governments are pushing for businesses to increase their environmental performance. Transport and logistics industry is one of the most important industries to consider in this regard. Fleet efficiency is the key to become a ‘greener’ company. Last but not least, when your fleet operates more efficiently, your employees will experience less stress and driver retention will improve significantly. Enough reasons to motivate you to optimise your fleet’s efficiency, right?

5 tips to improve your fleet's efficiency

We can break the relevant metrics down to three categories: safety, efficiency and compliance. Together with fleet management experts in the transport and logistics industry, we were able to determine the 5 most valuable tips to optimise your fleet’s efficiency. We can summarise them as follows:

• Tip 1: Be aware of your assets
  Always be aware of what and how all of your assets, your drivers, trucks, containers and trailers, are performing. Where are they? What are they doing? Is there empty space to use? Does your driver have enough driver time left? 
• Tip 2: Save on fuel (cost)
  Leverage your (existing) fuel network and guide and support your drivers on how to optimize their driving style to minimise fuel usage as much as possible.
• Tip 3: Give feedback on driver behaviour
  Assist your drivers by analysing their driving style and providing them with tips and feedback to improve it. For example, using cruise control can be a great benefit for the efficiency and the ease of driving, when used in the correct circumstances. Use driver behaviour tools to reward your drivers for their driving style. This way, you will also improve driver retention
• Tip 4: Conduct regular asset maintenance
  Conduct regular maintenance on all your assets to optimise their performance and avoid unnecessary roadside breakdowns. By keeping your vehicles in the optimal condition, you will prevent costly repairs and provide your driver with the best possible working environment. This will help you save money and improve employee well being. For example, keeping tabs on tyre pressure will lower fuel costs, will reduce wear and tear and will increase safety compliance.
• Tip 5: Focus on open and direct communication
  Make sure that both the internal office staff and the drivers are on the same page through direct and open communication. This helps you to be more proactive and respond better when something exceptional occurs. When you can manage exceptional situations better, you can focus more on structured planning for the daily routine. It is key that drivers and the back office can communicate with each other in a structured, safe and clearly defined way to solve these ‘problems’ as quickly as possible.

Want to learn more about how Transkap was able to optimise its fleet?

These 5 tips will guide you to a more efficient and profitable fleet. But are you curious about how other companies did this? Read Transkap’s testimonial and learn how they were able to monitor their whole fleet in one system, optimise the company's assets, improve the planning of the drivers' workload and achieve success at all levels. Download your free testimonial here.