Using telematics and fuel card integrations, a fleet manager identified driving habits that helped improve one of his truck's cost per mile.
The procurement function of researching, negotiating contracts, and purchasing fleet vehicles must harmonize with the management of those assets, so the corporation can achieve the most efficient and best utilization of a fleet’s vehicle lifecycle.
A truck’s total cost of ownership (TCO) covers a specific range of expense variables, regardless of the make or model. The four lifecycle categories that influence TCO are fixed costs, operating expenses, incidental costs, and depreciation/resale value. A key factor that drives these lifecycle categories is a vehicle’s service life.
If you want to provide added value to your company, you need to view fleet as a business and not simply an aggregation of assets to be managed cost-effectively. The fastest way to improve your bottom line is to increase fleet utilization, which increases the productivity of each individual truck.
In the long run, technology will exert inexorable downward pressure on overall fleet size and will eliminate altogether the need for some fleet vehicles. Despite this, fleet management will survive, albeit in a smaller capacity, and, most likely, in a completely different form than what we know today.
Many view fleet management as being a desk job, but it is more than that. When trouble-shooting fleet problems, such as increased costs for a particular user group, it is important to identify the root cause, which often requires on-site visual inspection of fleet assets and how they are being utilized.
When it’s all said and done, there usually is a right answer for a particular fleet and the best person to make that decision is a well-educated fleet manager.
The more expensive the asset, the longer it is kept in service; however, the need for short-term cost savings prompts some fleets to even further extend cycling parameters and defer replacements. But, what are the consequences?
Fleet management is part art, part science. Recent developments in the industry have made it more science and less art for sure. There are a lot of very complex decisions to go into the daily operation of a fleet.
When fleets make a full commitment to telematics they often find countless other ways to leverage the data beyond fuel.
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