Any commercial vehicle fleet functions with a few basic rules. You have to navigate a route on a regular basis, and you have to share the road with commuters and shoppers. The neighborhoods you drive in each have their own traffic rules and traffic patterns. Every school district has a different collection of roads that need to be driven more carefully and a under-used boulevards where you can make a little time.
Your fleet drivers are already learning what they can on-the-fly. They remember the good places to stop, the neighborhoods that are complicated to drive through. This collected information makes them more efficient. Their routes get smarter, and they get good at precisely using local traffic patterns to their benefit.
Often, they pass this information on to colleagues, but each driver usually only holds a few bits and pieces of local knowledge.
Instead of letting local expertise happen organically, you can boost the efficiency of your fleet by researching and pooling local knowledge, making your drivers' local expertise both complete and uniform.
1) Know Your School Zones
Good fleet driving involves getting from Point A to Point B as quickly and efficiently as possible. This means often going the maximum speed limit and managing intersections quickly. However, it's also vital for drivers to slow down and be extra careful any time they are within a school zone.
The problem is that school zones are not always perfectly marked, and often the 'unofficial' school zone is much wider than the signs indicate. You may want to research exactly which streets should be driven with caution (and at what times of day). Then either train your drivers or, even better, integrate it into your GPS navigation system.
2) Know Your Shortcuts
Sometimes a fleet driver will get behind schedule. Maybe traffic was bad, maybe an earlier service ran long. But for the sake of professionalism and efficiency, it is sometimes necessary to 'make a little time' by driving more quickly than usual.
While many drivers may be tempted to speed, the best way to make time is to take shortcuts that really do save time. Your biggest enemy are long stoplights that can add precious minutes to a route. Your best friends are underused boulevards with high speed limits and back roads with no speed limit and no traffic.
3) Know the Hidden Stop Signs
Professional drivers need an excellent driving record, which means carefully stopping at every stop sign and yielding when it's time to yield. Unfortunately, not every stop sign is easy to see. If your want your team to have a perfect record and a good reputation with local neighborhoods, it's important to carefully obey every suburban street sign and traffic direction.
The best way to do this is to have a map of local stop signs. Including the ones with bushes, trees, and ornamental walls blocking their sight from approaching cars. If your team can perfectly obey even the hidden stop signs and every faded cross-walk, they will gain a subtle local advantage and a great legal one.
4) Know the Cheapest Gas Stations
Maintaining the department budget is a group effort in any business fleet. Each driver and team is charge of where they gas up. Lunch and drink cooler choices may also matter depending on how you handle spending permissions. When they stop matters for scheduling but where they stop matters for pricing.
Keep track of local prices, especially for gas stations. Be aware of which gas stations are charging the least for a full tank and save a few dollars every day on the road by making sure those stations are included in an efficient daily route.
5) Know Where to Grab Lunch
The final local trick your fleet drivers should know is where to pick up lunch. Whether they're behind schedule and need a quick bite or need a place to park the truck for an hour, a good lunch place has undeniable value. Ideally, you can locate several places around town that have healthy sandwiches and the like to go.
You want meals that can be eaten on the road if necessary, but also won't put your teams into burger-comas. Sandwiches, wraps, rice bowls, burritos, and all with a quick turnaround from arrival to departure. Preferably local places with a drive-through. If your town is short on good lunch places, consider compromising by having dispatch call in a pick-up order.
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Having local knowledge of the streets, traffic patterns, and routing opportunities can streamline your fleet services in a way some teams never imagined. Your teams will be happier when they are perfectly in tune with local neighborhoods and get plenty of time for a tasty lunch. Your budget and time table will be happy when each vehicle gets to it's scheduled destination on time. For more fleet management tips, contact us today!
