Operating a fleet of cars or trucks can be one of your biggest costs and every year these costs keep going up. It helps to choose vehicles with high resale value and the best fuel economy. However, there’s more you can do to cut your fleet vehicle maintenance costs. Here are 4 tips many fleet management companies recommend, that can help.
1. Preventative Maintenance
Fleet vehicle maintenance can get expensive as the vehicles age. When you use a preventative maintenance program, you can cut these costs considerably. For example, do your drivers perform a vehicle check before each day starts? Something as simple as checking fluids, tires, and looking for leaks and other common problems, can catch trouble before it gets worse.
2. Examine Fuel Costs
Gasoline and diesel fuel prices fluctuate, but for the most part, they continue to rise. That’s why many fleet management services recommend buying vehicles with slightly smaller engines. Also, the way your drivers operate their vehicles can greatly affect fuel economy. If your vehicles have automated tire pressure sensing equipment, you can keep tires properly inflated all the time, and this saves on fuel and tire wear.
3. Limit Driver Accidents
Every driver should have safe driver training periodically. This is where fleet management services can be very helpful. They can help you with risk lowering strategies and safety program updates. They also work with you to update company driving policies.
4. Insurance
Did you know that vehicle insurance can be as much as ten percent of your total costs? In fact, some companies don’t figure insurance as part of their fleet vehicle maintenance costs and this is a mistake. It could be time to go over your insurance policy to see if there are ways you can cut costs, or lower your risks. For example, some companies may offer discounts for driver monitoring devices.