Fleet efficiency: The best-kept secret of high-performing businesses

When every mile, minute and dollar counts, fleet efficiency becomes more than a goal — it's a necessity. From improving asset utilization to cutting operational costs and boosting driver safety, GPS-enabled fleet management software can help businesses make better decisions that can save money, time and frustration. In fact, more than 60% of respondents to our 2025 Fleet Technology Trends survey consider efficiency to be one of the top benefits of fleet management. 

 To boost operational efficiency, businesses should use technology to address three main areas: cost, driver safety and utilization. 

1. Automate cost-reduction tasks

Growing costs are a persistent issue for nearly every business. More than 75% of business owners surveyed for the fleet trends report said costs are their biggest challenge, topping the list for five consecutive years.  

The same respondents are seeing fleet management help them put the brakes on costs and become more efficient. Respondents across industries reported that they reduced fuel costs by 16%, accidents by 22% and labor by 16%. Maintenance and insurance savings were impactful as well, decreasing costs by 16% and 13%, respectively. 

Here are a few ways that fleet management can help automate a wide range of tasks to lower costs:  

• Capture true working hours, eliminate manual timesheets and reduce inaccuracies. 
• Identify unauthorized vehicle usage, which can increase fuel and maintenance costs 
• Increase chances of recovering stolen vehicles. 
• Track fuel usage and behaviors such as unnecessary idling and speeding. Integrate fuel cards that show total fuel spend per vehicle and location of each fill up. 
• Stay up to date on the fleet maintenance schedule and service requirements, which helps increase uptime and avoid breakdowns and more costly repairs. 
• Find routes that require less fuel and identify unexpected traffic, weather and construction that can impact route efficiency and delivery windows. 

2. Take a closer look at safety

Fleet safety and efficiency are closely intertwined. On average, traffic crashes cost employers more than $26,000 per crash and may require employees to miss work recovering from injuries and vehicles stuck in the shop.¹ These costs range from sick leave, wage replacement and medical costs to property damage, liability and the soft cost of damaged company reputation. 

Prioritizing safety can enhance operational efficiency when you know the details driving safety incidents. Safety data and video documentation can help companies coach drivers on repeated, high-risk driving behaviors, defend against false claims and lower insurance premiums — all of which can boost business efficiency.  

• Intelligent AI dashcam. A smart dashcam, as part of an overall fleet management system, gives businesses a window into driving behavior. These cameras, when backed with AI, can:  
• Capture footage of unsafe driving behaviors and events in near-real time and send alerts with clips. 
• Enable video replays, downloads and displays alongside fleet information 
• Use AI to classify events, track driver performance over time and avoid hours of manually reviewing video. AI can also identify when drivers aren’t wearing seatbelts, doze off or get distracted and signal an audible in-cab alert to get them back on track. 
• GPS fleet tracking. This core feature of fleet management software gives fleet managers the visibility they need to know what’s happening with their vehicles in real time. They can identify location and respond to emergencies quickly, receive alerts for maintenance issues that could pose a safety threat, and help drivers identify safer routes. Fleet management can also track when drivers are speeding, slamming the brakes, or accelerating too quickly, which can be risky behaviors for themselves and other vehicles on the road. 

Companies in industries like mining or oil and gas can understand if their drivers enter a no-go zone or have been in a hazardous area for too long. For law enforcement and other public safety fleets, knowing the vehicle location can mean the difference between life and death. 

 Learn how Southern Sun Landscaping tackled multiple efficiency challenges. 

3. Analyze vehicle utilization data

 Vehicles that spend too much time sitting in the lot, idling on job sites or driving off route can drain your fleet’s overall efficiency. 

Leveraging telematics, fleet managers can gain access to data that can help them understand utilization at an individual vehicle level and broadly across the entire fleet. Automatically analyzing this data gives businesses greater visibility into their assets from virtually anywhere, at any time. They can also identify underused assets that can be sold or repurposed and make other informed decisions. Important utilization data points include the following: 

• Vehicle tracking helps fleet managers view location and the last time a vehicle moved, among other utilization data points. They can determine miles traveled or hours of use per year for each vehicle to see which cars and trucks are used too often and which may not be used enough. 
• Job history data shows where vehicles have been, when they arrived and how long they stayed. Managers can compare that information against fleet productivity and utilization goals and benchmarks. 
• Geofencing is an additional feature that works with fleet management software to set virtual boundaries that limit the operational area of every vehicle. It then tracks the amount of time each vehicle spends in the designated area for more information about usage patterns. 

 Managing costs and automating expense-related tasks, along with safety and utilization data analytics and monitoring, are key to an efficient, high-performing business. GPS fleet management systems can help, putting organizations on the path to a workplace culture of efficiency. 

Sources:

1 OSHA Motor Vehicle Safety page