Are you looking to make some changes to your delivery fleet's daily operations to increase its efficiency? Fleet management isn't a walk in the park — there are vehicles to maintain, expenses to control and a team to keep on-task, and safe.
As a fleet manager, even the smallest changes deployed are vital in determining business success. However, you can employ innovative ways to increase your delivery fleet efficiency and make your company more profitable.
How to increase my delivery fleet efficiency?
Evaluate your current fleet efficiency
To begin with, how can you monitor your progress without knowing your current efficiency? Start benchmarking your data to know your present stats. Then after implementing various ways to increase productivity, check back in with the stats to know if there's some improvement. Be sure to acquire data on:
Service time — In a day, how many deliveries or stops every drive make? What about in an hour? Which drivers or cars are the fastest? Which roads (and at what time of the day) enhance the fastest delivery?
Capacity usage — How close-to-capacity are your vehicles? Be sure to divide the delivery cargo by the total capacity of car to determine the percentage of used capacity.
Cost per mile — You want to determine how much every cost, either fixed or variable, amount to per mile. Add up all costs; taxes, insurance, fuel, repairs, maintenance costs, etc. before calculating cost per mile.
You must arm yourself with relevant information to boost your delivery fleet efficiency maximally.
Increase your daily stops
With fleet management software (FMS) available, you can not only plan ideal arrival times but also dispatch drivers whenever needed and reduce waiting around time. In fact, you can notify customers when their deliveries are about to arrive and reduce downtime.
Do you have an emergency delivery? FMS allows you to see your cars in real-time — It lets you easily assign drivers closest to the jobs, ensuring the task is performed quickly and efficiently. Also, increasing daily stops will reduce idling time, saving money on fuel, and make faster deliveries.
Go paperless
Even though keeping paper records is essential, digitize your documentation. This will significantly improve delivery efficiency — you can easily create, search, and store digital documents.
Apart from time-saving when reviewing day's work, adopting paperless documentation will help fleet managers effectively identify industry trends.
Perhaps they will catch customer service needs, or other preventive maintenance needs earlier. Moreover, FMS will help generate precise reports covering vehicles, drivers, revenue, fuel, repairs, and more.
Stay electronic logging devices (ELD) compliant
In countries like the USA, the government mandate that every commercial vehicle adhere to ELD regulations. Several exceptions apply: any short-haul or tow trucks exceptions are not affected. But with lousy service, most drivers will not pass their succeeding roadside inspection.
Such vehicles can be inoperative for ten hours or eight hours if it is a public service vehicle. Therefore, be sure to go for a service that ensures your fleet stay ELD compliant. Maintaining compliance and increasing efficiency requires the right fleet management technology.
Limit unauthorized vehicle use
Looking beyond your day-to-day delivery services can help find the unanticipated drain on your fleet operation time — unauthorized company resources use.
Drivers might use delivery cars to attend personal errands in-between jobs, dragging company operations while causing car wear & tear. Such time wastage might go unnoticed, affecting overall fleet efficiency. So investing in FMS or car tracking system can monitor all your fleet vehicles, increasing its efficiency.
To wrap up, you will stand to benefit upon incorporating the above strategies in your daily fleet delivery operations. Efficient delivery fleet needs efficient management, which will breathe life into your business, leaving you with something to value and appreciate. For more information, feel free to contact us today!
