If you run a transportation business, you will be fully aware that one of the most important elements in this is the management of your fleet. As long as you are looking after your fleet, you are going to find that your business is much more likely to succeed, so it’s definitely something to be aware of. But what exactly is meant by good fleet management, and how does it really look? Let’s take a look at this in some detail, so we can really get to the bottom of it. Your transportation business is going to benefit from this hugely.
Purchasing & Disposal
The two ends of the process really are purchasing the vehicles and disposing of them, and you need to ensure there is some kind of consistency between the two if you want your fleet to have a good management to it. That means using guidelines for both ends of the process and making sure that everyone is aware of them and sticks to them. Make sure you take the time to spec out your options in both cases, so you know exactly what you are doing with your vehicles and how to get rid of them.
Insurance & Legal Protection
There are so many things that can go wrong when you have a whole fleet of people driving vehicles, no matter how careful those drivers are and how strict you are with break times and so on. Things just happen on the roads, and you need a good way to deal with them when they do. There are two important tools which are going to prove to be essential here: insurance and legal protection. With insurance, you can ensure that your fleet is not going to cause you to be out of pocket through any accidents. With legal protection, you know you can always call on your car accident lawyer to give you advice and help defend your case, should such a circumstance arise.
Scheduling
You need to determine which schedule is actually going to be the most effective and sensible for your specific company. That means paying close attention to the real demands of the moment, and not what you think should be happening. So if your team drives at night, you need to make sure you are scheduling in a way that makes sense for that. However, you do it, make sure that you have a schedule which makes sense for everyone, and which is going to be suitable for the business’ demands and needs.
Maintenance
With proper maintenance of your fleet’s vehicles, you can keep a hold of them much longer, get a lot more use out of them, and therefore improve the profit margin of your business. You are also going to be operating a safer fleet with fewer accidents if those vehicles are being properly maintained. Be sure to include this as a regular part of your fleet management, as it really is something that you can’t overlook. Get the experts in where necessary to fix any problems that might arise.