Fleet management: are you adopting best practice?

When you’ve been working as a fleet or transport manager for years, your experience counts. Your insight into the day to day logistics is invaluable to the smooth running of the fleet and the business as a whole. We’d be prepared to bet that you’re well versed in the way that professional drivers work as well. However, what was best practice a few years ago may well have changed. Are you keeping up to date with the latest industry guidelines?

Familiarising yourself with the latest developments helps you to keep your fleet efficient and competitive. That’s great news for your staff, vehicles and your business. Here’s our guide to keeping yourself up to speed.

Know your numbers

We’re willing to bet that you spend quite a lot of time tracking and analysing figures. In theory, at least. When TomTom Business Solutions commissioned research into the use of tachographs amongst fleet managers they found that 28% never analysed their tachograph data to ensure compliance. 20% had had a tachograph infringement recorded against them in the last three years and 15% had missed download deadlines which could have resulted in a financial penalty. The potential for breaches of the regulations and financial penalties were a growing concern.

If meeting your legal obligations is becoming a struggle, what could you be missing out on elsewhere? Thankfully, there are new technologies that can make the process quicker and easier, freeing you up for more high level analysis.

Adopt new technologies

If you haven’t already invested in fleet telematics there could be any number of reasons. A lot of our clients had explored the idea in the past but found that it wasn’t user friendly. Others who had existing systems found that the various different software packages didn’t work well together. They ended up spending just as much time transferring data from one place to another.

Things have changed. TomTom have now introduced telematics that you can download whilst a vehicle is still on the road. It collates automatically so that you can get on with analysis. There are a wide range of systems available that enable different products to work together seamlessly. That doesn’t just allow you to track vehicle data. It can also give you valuable information about your drivers and even track vehicle maintenance issues.

Look after your drivers

Driver welfare is a key concern for all employers. Whilst you may already have good procedures in place to look after their physical health, new research has shown the importance of addressing their mental health too.

A driver struggling with stress or depression can drive erratically and make poor decisions on the road. Addressing those issues early helps your employee but could also help to prevent accidents. Software can’t help you to read minds. It can tell you if a driver is behaving erratically. Put that knowledge to work alongside a communication policy that helps driver to raise any issues and it will help your business in the long run.

No matter what procedures you put in place, it’s important to keep learning. If you’d like to know more about how fleet management software can help the process, get in touch.