3 Simple Ways to Reduce Your Fleet’s Fuel Costs
Rising fuel costs must be on the mind of most fleet managers and business owners who rely heavily on their fleets right now. And, if you've had trouble keeping them under control or cannot push costs onto your customers anymore, then you'll have to start looking for solutions.
If you haven't spent too much time monitoring the habits of your drivers, you’ll have no choice but to start being more serious about it if you want to survive. You may also have to make changes to the way you do things. Let’s take a look at a few simple ways that you can reduce your fleet’s fuel cost.
Invest in the Right Telematics Solution
Some people will just pick telematics solutions so they can meet compliance standards, but you have to pick fleet management solutions that will make it easy to gather, read, and analyze the data from your vehicles. This is ultimately what will allow you to plan logistics better and see exactly what your drivers are doing on the road.
Some tools will allow you to easily see when your drivers are using their vehicles to run personal errands or waste time. Some tools will also allow you to see things like how long they’ve kept their vehicles idling at stops. Once you have all of this data, you’ll be able to bring outliers in and let them know of the situation and how they need to fix it. This will also come in handy during performance evaluations.
Make Sure that Your Vehicles are in top Shape
The condition of the vehicles in your fleet will make a direct impact on how much you spend on fuel costs. Something as simple as having gunked-up spark plugs could lead to more energy consumed, so make sure that you have regular checkups and train your employees to check their vehicles too.
Things like tire pressure can have a big influence on how much fuel a vehicle uses, so always make sure that you check the pressure on all the tires in your fleet and instruct your drivers to check it themselves at the start of the day. Doing this alone could allow you to save thousands of dollars in fuel for the year.
Switch to Electric
Another thing you could do would be to change some or all the vehicles in your fleet to electric. You could go for a trial run with a few vehicles and see if you're making savings with all things considered.
Eclectic vehicles may cost a little bit more on average, but if electricity is cheap where you are, you can expect to recoup these extra costs very quickly. Not to mention that electric vehicles cost a lot less to maintain, which will allow you to cut your fleet’s overall costs.
All these tips should help you reduce your fuel costs significantly and have a little more room to breathe. Make sure that you focus on training solid drivers who drive responsibly and consider using alternative transportation methods to cut costs.
