With every fleet, you will have room for improvement. The most successful managers constantly seek out new ways to improve their fleet. Following a few basic ideas, you can guarantee that you improve your operations and make yourself more competitive. Let’s have a look at some of the best practices to keep pace with the best companies.
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Proactive Safety Approach
Don’t wait until things go haywire to act. You can save your company from multi-million-dollar lawsuits with attention to the numerous distractions and hazards. If you see a driver not paying attention on the road, point it out ahead of time. You may save a life. Managers must learn how to see problems before they manifest. Get ahead of problems and take action. If you wait until a near miss or an accident, your company could have to pay through the nose.
Using a driver behavior monitoring app may sound unnecessary, but the alternative may cost you more. If you don’t want to do that, you could also install an ELD in the truck. This has numerous advantages like telling your driver’s speed and how much time he spends idling. You may also want to install an ELD because you must comply with the mandate. Non-exempt commercial drivers found without an ELD will be placed out of service.
Making Maintenance Easy
The most successful fleet managers will take active measures to make maintenance easier. This action matters because of how it will save you money. Poor maintenance can lead to costly problems that you could’ve fixed before they became expensive. Make inspections, reporting and scheduling as simple as possible for drivers to encourage better maintenance habits of the truck.
You have people who write it down on whiteboards, on files or with handwritten notes. Software nowadays eliminates the need. Receive automatic alerts as soon as the time comes around. You don’t even need to waste space putting up a board or creating a file that you will need to review. A formal maintenance process will help make the workplace safer overall because it creates the habit of awareness and action which is translate to other areas of safety as well.
Create Goals for Driver Performance
Rewarding good driver performance with incentives can lead you to higher savings on fuel since they will have a reason to keep the fuel costs low. Important to note, you must stick with this and honor your commitment. Unfortunately, some trucking companies offer these programs and try to weasel their way out of them when the driver comes close to reaching the goals. This isn’t fair, and it will hurt your company and its reputation.
Document Everything: Digitally
Instead of keeping your documents in a physical folder, you can increase security and eliminate the excess through digital storage. Digital storage means putting your documents on a computer where you can print them off as needed. You will have a better understanding of where your fleet information has been stored to pull it up easily with the simple typing of a keyword. The most competitive companies have switched to this system because it enables them to keep track of their files more effectively. Things like photos, invoices, receipts, work orders, employee records and product manuals can all be placed into one central location making the information easy to pull up.
