The COVID-19 pandemic is changing fleet safety protocols as revealed in my recent survey of commercial fleet managers that identified the top safety challenges currently facing their fleets.
Are your fleet drivers using company vehicles for personal use? Setting policies regarding family use, age limits, driving infractions, and other behaviors helps reduce risks and limit liability.
While there never seems to be enough money to go around, one of the less talked about aspects of fleet management is the amount of budget dollars that are wasted every year.
Many times employees who have an “entitlement mentality” do not have a sense of responsibility to take care of the company asset as if it was their own. This impacts fleet costs. A company vehicle in poor condition because of driver abuse or neglect will result in lost resale value or incur unnecessary reconditioning expense at auction.
Negligent entrustment lawsuits typically focus on whether the company has an established safety policy and whether it enforces those policies. It is important to remember the standard for negligent entrustment is not whether the employer knows it has put people at risk; it is whether the employer should have known.
Despite the best laid plans of iron-clad fleet safety policies, accidents will happen, and commercial drivers need to know what to do when the time comes.
Procurement studies reveal that 20% or more of total corporate spend is for purchases that could have been acquired at a lower cost.
While having a robust fleet safety policy will help prevent accidents from occurring for fleets, technologies, such as telematics, can help also greatly curb preventable accidents.
Senior management exerts intense pressure on fleet managers to control and/or reduce vehicle acquisition and operating expenses. To accomplish this, a fleet managers can pursue three different cost-control strategies — cost savings, cost deferral, or cost avoidance. In order to implement a successful cost-control strategy you need to institutionalize the mechanisms to curb money-wasting behaviors.
Any time you make an exception to fleet policy in resolving a driver-related problem, you may potentially create a new problem that will come back to haunt you in the future.
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