Fuel costs aside, fixed costs such as lease of vehicles are among the largest expenditures for a transportation company. Before a vehicle can start earning profit, it first has to earn back its costs. So the key here is to take the maximum out of your fleet – the more (useful) miles a vehicle covers each month, the bigger the profit. So which are the ways to increase the mileage?

1) Make drivers work more hours. In most of the companies in Europe these option is “maxed out” already – drivers are doing the maximum hours permitted by laws. So there is not much room for improvement here.

2) Put several drivers on a truck. Sometimes it makes sense to have double-switch, especially if the customer is willing to pay extra for fast delivery. Unfortunately it means they have to share same small cabin space and this does not always work out.

3) Minimise the losses (including wasted mileage) to mistakes (and sometimes laziness). Obviously, if you avoid the mistakes and are able to identify and solve them in as early stage as possible, you will win not only the (useful) mileage for the vehicle, but also customer satisfaction and revenue. This is something that existing fleet management address passively – i.e. it is the duty of your fleet manager to notice that something is wrong and to solve it. LogistIT Monitoring on the other hand sends an alert to the fleet manager as soon as something is not going according to the plan. This helps fleet manager to identify the problem quicker, thus save money and time to the company.

4) Make fleet managers to plan better. This is the largely untouched field but surprisingly can increase the efficiency (and thus useful mileage) of the vehicles by two-digit percentages. When your fleet manager schedules cargos to vehicles, does he take into account the servicing. Does he do his best to minimize the idling? The chances are that he does not. In LogistIT we have addressed this subject profoundly – LogistIT Scheduling gives the fleet manager the tool to plan the cargos, drivers and vehicles in the most efficient way. It shows. And, as we know – you can only improve the things you measure.

Does your tracking system help you to be more efficient? If not really, take a look what LogistIT offers.