Improve fleet management: 4 insights from fleet managers

For fleet managers, increasing fleet productivity and decreasing costs is a top priority. Investing in fleet tracking technology to help manage your fleet is one of the most effective ways to realize these goals.

According to the 2024 Fleet Technology Trends Report, conducted for Verizon Connect by Bobit Business Media, a majority of fleet managers and executives across industries indicate that GPS tracking has had a beneficial impact on their fleet operations.

• 70% consider fleet tracking “very” or “extremely” beneficial
• 55% across all industries saw improved productivity post-adoption
• 41% indicated that they realized a positive ROI within 1 year of implementing a fleet management solution

It’s clear that fleet tracking can help improve many facets of operations that contribute to fleet management. Let’s take a closer look at what fleets and fleet managers can achieve with the right telematics technology.  

Improve fleet management: 4 insights from fleet managers

1. Contributing to fleet route optimization

By continually monitoring every vehicle’s location, a fleet management system provides multiple data points for dynamic route optimization, including vehicle stops, mileage, individual driving patterns and other important management data. 

Effective route planning is critical to fleet’s success. With the right route optimization software, fleets can:

• View a near real-time comprehensive map of all current vehicle locations and their status
• Use the closest-vehicle function to specify an address and locate the closest vehicle
• Route a specific vehicle to the next job
• Review vehicle location history online
• Track weekly mileage.
• Monitor mileage trends with various easy-to-run reports

2. Finding additional ways to reduce fuel costs

Fleet management software lets you stay on top of operational aspects that impact efficient fuel consumption, such as:

• Speeding: Maintaining proper speeds can significantly reduce fuel usage. See speed events per driver and set up alerts that are triggered any time a driver breaches a specific speed threshold. 
•  Idling: Monitor unnecessary, wasteful idling and receive alerts any time idling has gone past a specific threshold you define.
• Fuel monitoring: Integrate fuel cards with software and run reports that show total fuel spend per vehicle and the location of each fill-up. Track miles per gallon, pinpoint causes of high fuel consumption, reduce fuel slippage (e.g., stolen fuel) and enforce fuel-saving habits.

3. Helping to prioritize security and safety

Keeping tabs on how every driver operates every vehicle and knowing each vehicle’s condition before it hits the road can be a daunting task. Vehicle tracking can help managers understand where issues exist and where improvements can be made toward achieving safety and compliance standards.

 Here are a few examples of how telematics can help prioritize safety and security:

•  Vehicle theft and unauthorized use: Use geofences to place virtual boundaries around designated geographical areas to track fleet vehicles as they move in and out of those areas. Tracking can also aid law enforcement in the event a vehicle is stolen. 
• Routine maintenance: Know when vehicles are due for maintenance. Along with helping to keep vehicles safe, this helps keep vehicles on the road longer and operating costs low. 
• Visual evidence: Use integrated video to get a holistic view of driving conditions at any point in time. View driver footage alongside road-facing footage to help mitigate false claims, promote driver safety and document accident circumstances.
• Speeding: Monitor vehicle speed and location, compare vehicle speeds against posted speed limits when planning vehicle routes, and track speeding incidents by driver and vehicle.
• Hard braking and acceleration: This behavior is risky and can damage vehicles, making them less safe to operate. Get a clear picture of engine and vehicle diagnostics by identifying when and where these events occur.

4. Reviewing and refining vehicle and asset utilization

Knowing which vehicles are unused or underused is just as important as knowing where active vehicles are and what they’re doing. With the right fleet tracking solution, managers can receive detailed reporting metrics around miles traveled, days utilized, number of trips and more. This can help identify vehicles that may be underutilized, or not needed in the fleet at all.

 Helpful features include:

•  Field service scheduling: Fully integrated, intelligent and simple scheduling and dispatching can help you overcome inefficiencies and promote worker productivity.
• Route planning: By knowing the most efficient routes to take, drivers can get more done in less time.
• Asset management and utilization: Asset-tracking hardware lets you easily monitor and track equipment—both powered and non-powered assets—to always know the location and usage.
• Vehicle usage data: Easily analyze annual vehicle utilization by model and year to reveal whether older vehicles are used inefficiently and are candidates for elimination to reduce overall fleet size. Optimizing fleet size helps you manage a leaner, more efficient fleet.
• Job history: Know where vehicles have been, when they arrived and how long they stayed.

Fleet tracking technology, including fleet management software, can help improve your fleet management efforts, streamline operations and gain a competitive edge.