Top Hacks to Cut Costs While Growing Your Fleet

Discovering the need to expand your fleet is great news; it means your business is growing. But each time you add a vehicle, your costs increase as well. You’re adding to your insurance premiums. More drivers on the road means greater chances of an accident – along their associated costs and liability. And there’s increased fuel and maintenance expenses to consider.

On the surface, it sounds daunting – especially if your business centers on delivering a service and your fleet is simply a means to reach your customers and not a core part of your mission. But with a straightforward plan – a plan informed by the data already flowing through your business – it doesn’t have to be daunting at all. 

In today’s episode, you’ll learn top hacks to cut costs while growing your fleet so you can cut the unnecessary expense out of your operation and maximize the profit that hits your bottom line.

Ready to take action on your cost-cutting plan? Download a short eBook that will help you get started: info.intellishift.com/cut-costs 

Transcript

Hello, I’m John Carione, host of the ConnectedOps Visionaries podcast. Today I’ve got another “connected insight” episodes. These special episodes are designed to deliver actionable insights and best practices that you can put to work in your business right now.

Today, I’m here to share top hacks to cut costs while growing your fleet.

Discovering that you need to expand your fleet is great news; it means your business is growing. But each time you add a vehicle, your costs increase as well. You’re adding to your insurance premiums. More drivers on the road means greater chances of an accident – along with their associated costs and liability. And there’s increased fuel and maintenance expenses to consider. 

On the surface, it can sound daunting – especially if your business centers on delivering a service and your fleet is simply a means to reach your customers and not a core part of your mission. But with a straightforward plan – a plan informed by the data already flowing through your business – it doesn’t have to be daunting at all. 

Data-driven decisions put cost-cutting power in your hands, enabling you to take action quickly and ensure that as your revenue and fleet grow, you’re simultaneously squeezing every drop of unnecessary expense out of your operations – and maximizing the profit that hits your bottom line.  

To start, let’s look at fuel costs. With prices hitting the highest point in seven years, news coverage makes it seem like an expense that’s out of your control. It’s not. The key is knowing which levers you can pull to make a cost-reducing difference. Here’s how to take immediate and measurable action using insight gained through your unified telematics, safety and operational data:

Conduct a vehicle route review. Are your routes optimized so your drivers can service the maximum number of customers in a day without traveling extra miles or unnecessarily idling in traffic? Reviewing historical route trends can uncover sticking points that are costing you fuel and time.

Correct negative driver behaviors. A significant amount of fuel expense stems from behaviors like harsh braking and acceleration, speeding, idling and unauthorized vehicle use. All are coachable and preventable when you harness the information reported by your telematics and safety equipment.

Ensure your drivers fuel up at the lowest priced station. By leveraging a fuel management solution, you prevent unauthorize purchases, can track and manage miles per gallon, and can give your drivers in-the-moment visibility into the lowest priced fueling station on their route. 

Optimize your vehicle utilization. With routing streamlined, you may find that you can cover more business with the same resources – enabling smart fleet growth where vehicles are added when they’re truly needed and not a moment sooner – this is especially critical given the current chip shortage that’s making fleet expansion a challenge.

Next on the list, is inspections and maintenance. These can be profit killers if they’re not performed consistently and proactively. To ensure compliance and reduce costs, digitize your inspection process and automate reporting. This ensures that small issues are identified and sent to your maintenance crew in real time where they’re resolved quickly, before they deteriorate into more costly repairs or downtime.  

Finally, a powerful step in preventing escalating costs is reducing safety-related incidents. This takes on-the-road visibility. You’ve got to know what’s happening when your drivers are behind the wheel and be able to take action. 

A study in the Journal of Safety Research found that deploying dual-facing dash cameras can reduce safety incidents by 60% and cut accident-related costs by an incredible 86%. If the cameras are powered by AI (artificial intelligence), you’ll maximize your cost reduction efforts with real-time alerting and in-cab coaching on even hard-to-detect behaviors like following too close, distracted or fatigued driving, or a hazard in the roadway.

You’ll prevent avoidable accidents and have the evidence needed to exonerate your drivers in the event of a false claim of liability for accident or property damage. And, ask your insurance provider about premium discounts or subsidies for deploying a fleet dash cam program – many offer them.

The takeaway here is, that when you digitize and unify your operational data, you can quickly identify and take action to reduce the excessive costs in your business. 

If you didn’t have a chance to capture all of these hacks, don’t worry. I’ve got a short ebook for you to download. Go to: info.intellishift.com/cut-costs. The download link is also in the show notes. 

And if you’ve found this information helpful, please take a moment to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss and episode – and give us a rating and review while you’re there.

Thanks, and have a great day!