Small Business Guide to Fleet Management
Reading Time: 5 minutes Whether you have ten or one hundred vehicles in your fleet, your small business needs a carefully-designed fleet management program. Come up with a way to organize your company’s vehicles and you should be able to see your fleet being more efficient and your costs will drop. However, not every small business owner in Australia knows how to manage their fleet effectively.
Not only this, but many Aussie entrepreneurs don’t even bother to design a fleet management program. If you don’t want to fall under this category, it’s time to put some extra effort into managing your fleet. And to help you, we came up with a small business guide to fleet management.
Table of Contents
Do you need fleet management?
The first thing you need to do when designing a fleet management program is to ask yourself do you need one? There are so many businesses out there, but they don’t all have to focus on increasing their fleet’s efficiency. For example, if you’re running a brick-and-mortar store, you probably don’t need a fleet management program since your fleet includes one or two vehicles you use to get goods to your store.
However, in case you run a restaurant and you offer delivery service or a plumbing business and your employees need to get to your clients, coming up with one is a must. Just bear in mind that a fleet doesn’t necessarily only include cars and trucks. A fleet can also consist of vehicles such as motorbikes and boats.
Primary responsibilities
If you don’t already have a fleet management program, chances are you’re wondering what exactly your responsibilities are when running one.
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Most importantly, you need to keep data regarding your company’s vehicles and use it when making any future decisions that have something to do with your fleet. For example, it’s extremely important that you keep detailed maintenance history for every vehicle in your fleet.
That’ll help you decide when a vehicle needs further maintenance or when it’s time to replace it. Besides this, it’s also your responsibility to make sure your employees get all the training they need for operating vehicles in your fleet.
Last but not least, it’s up to you to come up with the best routes for your employees to use in order to reduce gas costs. This is especially the case if you’re based in a big city such as Sydney or Melbourne.
The benefits
Another important thing to have in mind when managing your company’s fleet are the benefits fleet management programs come with.
After all, there are reasons why so many small businesses out there are putting effort into making sure they’re fleet is well-organized. As mentioned above, if you manage your fleet effectively, you should be able to see your business saving significant amounts of money on gas.
Moreover, it’s very important that you keep striving to take your operations to the next level and that’s exactly what you do by designing a fleet management program. It’s also important to note that having better control over your company’s fleet will result in increased employee satisfaction.
This is mostly because they’ll be a part of a well-organized system with clearly defined company policies.
Maintaining vehicles
We’ve already mentioned that maintaining vehicles is a part of managing your fleet. This is, in fact, one of the most important things you need to do in order to keep your fleet working like a well-oiled machine.
Fail to pay enough attention to maintenance and you might see your vehicles starting to use more gas or require more costly repairs on a regular basis. Therefore, you need to have a mechanic inspect your vehicles as often as possible. Moreover, you need to invest in quality car parts in order to keep them running.
The job also includes knowing where to acquire quality car parts for low prices. For example, if you’re based in Sydney, you need to know where you can get cheap tires in Blacktown that are better than some expensive ones.
The technology
It’s no secret we live in the age of technology and there are so many devices small businesses can use to improve their operations. Some of the popular devices are considered to be perfect tools for business owners managing their fleet.
Most notably, GPS systems have become a must-use tool in fleet management. Not only do these little things show your employees the shortest route to their location but you also get a chance to keep track of how productive they are.
Besides GPS, your team members can use smartphones and tablets to communicate and update others on the jobs or deliveries they’ve completed. We should also note that wearable devices such as smartwatches and Bluetooth headsets are constantly gaining more attention in Australia.
Buying vehicles
Obviously, in order to have a fleet, you need to buy vehicles for your business. As your small business grows, you’ll also need to get more vehicles or replace the ones you’re already using. Knowing how to choose the right vehicles for your business is the key here as it can potentially save you significant amounts of money.
However, opting for the wrong vehicles can also leave you with cars or trucks that simply don’t fit your company’s needs. To avoid this, you need to use the data you collect on your current vehicles and see how the ones can fit into your fleet.
When replacing your vehicles, make sure you get the right price for the vehicles you’re selling, even if that means taking time to find the buyer. Luckily, there are so many Australian websites you can get on to buy and sell vehicles for your company.
Depending on the industry you’re in, coming up with a fleet management program is an absolute must. If you take into consideration how much you can get by managing your fleet the right way, you could be able to take your company’s operations to a whole new level just by getting a better grip over your vehicles.
Even if managing your fleet seems difficult at the moment, there’s no reason to panic as you’ll be able to learn as you go.
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