How Does Fleet Management Work in 2024?

Between optimizing routes, maintaining vehicles, and judging driver performance, managing a fleet manually is a difficult task. Improper management leads to wasted money and time, inefficient driving, and missing essential tasks or actions like maintenance checks.

A great way to prevent these problems is by using tools like GPS fleet tracking systems and fleet management software. No matter what tools you use, proper fleet management is an important part of boosting the efficiency and effectiveness of your fleet.

This guide examines fleet management in general, explaining how it works, what it does, and its benefits.

Key Takeaways

• Fleet management is a broad term that refers to the actions and considerations a company must take to ensure its fleet of vehicles operates successfully.
• A combination of fleet management software and GPS devices are used to track and help maintain vehicles, manage fuel, ensure safe driving practices, and optimize routes.
• Fleet management systems offer benefits such as saving money, boosting efficiency and customer satisfaction, improving communication, and keeping vehicles in good shape.

How Does Fleet Management Work?

Fleet management is an overarching term that refers to the considerations and actions a business needs to take in order to keep its fleet operating successfully. This includes making deliveries on time, maintaining efficiency, and ensuring that vehicles are in optimal condition.

It generally works by using a type of fleet management software combined with tracking devices or sensors you install on each vehicle in your fleet. These devices track various technical information about a vehicle, such as how far it drives, its speed, idle time, and fuel levels.

Data is collected by the onboard hardware on each vehicle and transferred to a database, where fleet managers or other employees view and analyze it. This makes it easy to identify when a particular vehicle requires maintenance, a driver is breaking the rules, or a vehicle needs to be fueled up.

Having a centralized place to store and view this data also makes it straightforward for your team to identify trends and areas for improvement within your fleet.

Here’s a breakdown of the advantages of fleet management software and GPS tracking for your business.

Tracking Your Fleet

First and foremost, the tracking devices you install on your fleet let you know where the vehicles are and where they’ve been. Seeing vehicle locations in real time lets you provide accurate delivery updates and ensures drivers are taking the optimal route and not wasting fuel by going on detours.

These tools also help monitor and compare the movement between different vehicles to allow for optimal route planning.

Helping To Maintain Vehicles

Fleet management software also lets you monitor various elements related to the vehicle’s physical condition. These include tire wear over time, mileage, brake usage, and oil changes.

With this information being updated in real time, it’s easy to identify when a vehicle is due for maintenance. Over time, you can even schedule maintenance in advance once you have ample data on the average life of critical components—for instance, tires and brakes.

If you don’t have a fleet management system in place, it’s incredibly difficult to monitor all these factors for numerous vehicles.

Managing Fuel

Fuel management is an important part of having a profitable fleet. If you’re not careful, fuel costs can easily eat up a huge portion of your earnings. By using fleet management software, you can monitor fuel consumption directly and ensure you’re not wasting fuel by sending drivers on suboptimal routes.

Evaluating Driver Performance and Overall Safety

Fleet management systems also let you keep tabs on how your drivers behave and perform. For example, the system will tell you their driving speeds, seatbelt use, braking behavior, acceleration speeds, how harsh they turn, and idle times.

Most vehicle accidents are caused by human error of some kind, so monitoring your drivers and ensuring they employ safe driving practices helps reduce the likelihood of an incident occurring.

Also, your industry likely has standards you must comply with, and these systems help ensure you know what you need to do to remain compliant. This often includes making vehicle checks, keeping insurance valid, and ensuring drivers have the proper training.

The Benefits of Fleet Management Systems

Saving Money

Arguably, the main benefit of implementing these systems is to reduce costs for your business. There are several ways this software helps you save money, such as:

• Saving on fuel costs by taking efficient routes.
• Avoiding penalties and fines by remaining compliant.
• Properly maintaining vehicles in advance to reduce the chances of needing a major repair or paying high maintenance costs.
• Better driver performance to reduce the chances of an accident or additional wear and tear on the vehicle.

Boost Customer Satisfaction and Efficiency

These systems also help improve your fleet’s productivity and efficiency. They ensure you take the best delivery route and avoid accidents or other events that slow down traffic and waste time.

The more efficient your drivers, the quicker their deliveries or visits will be. Fleet management systems let you share useful information with the end customer, such as approximate wait times and delivery windows.

Instant Driver Communication

Many fleet management systems allow you to communicate directly with your drivers in real time. This could be anything from a change in their route to an update on deliveries to rescheduling.

Most of these communication tools are hands-free and designed with safety in mind. This ensures your driver doesn’t have to check their phone or mess with a radio to get important updates or instructions.