If you’re dealing with drivers forgetting to track their mileage, out of control fuel costs, unnecessary wear and tear on your vehicles, or other issues related to keeping vehicles on the road, implementing a corporate fleet management program is just what you need.
When you first started your business, you may have relied on pen and paper or even spreadsheets to track and manage your fleet. But your fleet has grown, and you need a more efficient system. Ignoring that need can impact your bottom line for the worse.
In this article, we discuss the essential components of corporate fleet management and the best practices that can give you more control over your hard-earned dollars.
Table Of Contents
- Corporate Fleet Management And Your Bottom Line
- Corporate Fleet Management Considerations
- Best Practices For Implementing Corporate Fleet Management
Corporate Fleet Management And Your Bottom Line
The purpose of a corporate fleet management program — the strategic oversight of commercial and work vehicles — is to help you evaluate and control a major cost center for your business: fleet activities.
As your fleet grows, one of the biggest fleet expenses you’ll face are fuel costs. You may find that your drivers are spending more than they should while on the road — and the more drivers you bring on, the more this becomes an issue.
That’s why starting your corporate fleet management program with a fuel card is the way to go. Then, once you have a better handle on fleet fuel usage, you can add other tools and processes into the mix to gain even more control, including:
- Fleet management software
- Telematics
- GPS tracking and navigation
- Vehicle diagnostic and maintenance software
- Driver monitoring systems
- Electronic Logging Devices (ELDs)
Corporate Fleet Management Considerations
Your Fleet Technology Stack
Making sure your fleet tech stack is up to date — including fleet management software, telematics, and a fuel card — is the best way to put your fleet on the road to success.
How do these tools help?
Fleet management software can help you keep all the details of your fleet — such as registration, insurance, and permits — organized so you don’t end up with fines and sidelined assets that delay your activities.
Telematics can help you monitor your fleet and build preventative maintenance schedules by providing real-time data about the condition, location, direction, and rate of speed of each vehicle.
Smart fuel cards give you the ability to set spending limits, control driver purchases, prevent theft, cut spending, comply with all International Fuel Tax Association regulations, and support the other essential fleet tech you use everyday.
With these tech tools in your workflow, you can build better visibility and control the major cost centers that impact your daily fleet activities.
Vehicle Type
A comprehensive corporate fleet management program should include an analysis of the best types of vehicles for your business.
Does your fleet need vans, pickup trucks, and semi trucks? Or, can employees do their work with a full-size sedan or, better yet, a smaller, more fuel-efficient car?
For example, you might find that drivers can do the same amount of work with a compact pickup truck (e.g., a Ford Ranger) instead of a full-size pickup truck (e.g., a Ford F150).
Consider stepping down to the compact option to help your fleet get better gas mileage overall and reduce the cost of keeping those vehicles running.
Your drivers know what they realistically need in order to complete their tasks, so talk to them to get their thoughts on vehicle size, and then analyze fuel-use data and expenses to see what might work best for your fleet.
Fleet Size
As your business grows, you might be tempted to buy or lease several fleet vehicles at once, but that’s not always the best move.
Before adding to (or taking away from) your fleet, analyze the data provided by your technology stack — such as vehicle activity percentage, distance traveled, and fuel use — to determine the minimum number of vehicles necessary to keep your fleet running smoothly.
For example, you may find that one of your vehicles only gets used once a week. You could potentially eliminate that vehicle from the fleet altogether and use your other vehicles to cover the workload.
Right-sizing your fleet can lead to lower spending on everything from fuel and insurance to registration and maintenance, allowing you to direct those funds toward other fleet spending.
Fuel Efficiency
All of the components we’ve mentioned so far — technology, vehicle type, and fleet size — make it easier to control and reduce one of the biggest cost centers of your fleet: fuel use.
That said, you can also focus on fuel efficiency itself to help manage the spending that keeps your vehicles on the road day after day.
With fuel card software and GPS data, you have access to real-time traffic data (such as accidents, traffic jams, congestion, and slow downs), up-to-date route information, road conditions, and much more.
Use these data points to plot the most efficient course from point A to point B, reduce the wear and tear on your vehicles, and eliminate unnecessary idling.
Corporate Fleet Management Best Practices
Define Fleet Needs And Goals
Your fleet is unique, so the needs and goals that drive it forward are different from those of other fleet-based businesses.
For example, maybe your fuel costs are increasing because your drivers only want to use certain gas stations, which means they aren’t traveling the most fuel-efficient routes. In that case, you’ll want to focus on managing fuel use and optimizing routes.
Or maybe you’re spending too much time each week reviewing fuel card transactions because you suspect fraud. One of your goals should be to enhance safety.
Lastly, you might feel like you constantly have one or more vehicles out of service for repairs. Your goal, then, may be to keep fleet vehicles in better shape, so you’d implement preventative maintenance schedules as well as pre- and post-trip inspections.
Optimize Driver Routes
Few things can help you control and reduce fuel costs like optimizing the routes your vehicles take every day.
Use fleet management software and GPS to find the exact location of your vehicles, approved roads (for larger vehicles), and alternate routes that allow you to plot the shortest distance to a destination and redirect vehicles to avoid delays.
Doing so can impact costly variables like:
- Total miles driven
- Time en route
- Engine run time (both moving the vehicle and idling)
- Fuel consumption
- Number of deliveries or appointments per day
Conduct Regular Driver Training
Does this sound familiar? You have one or two drivers who always accelerate too hard, speed, or drive distracted. You’ve tried to explain the importance of proper driving behaviors, but nothing changes.
Training (and retraining) drivers as part of your corporate fleet management program can help eliminate these and other poor driving behaviors that reduce MPG and cause unnecessary wear and tear on your vehicles.
The specific training you focus on depends on the jobs your drivers perform, but some topics to consider include:
- Proper driving technique
- Reminders about the dangers of distracted, fatigued, and
- impaired driving
- On-the-road vehicle monitoring and maintenance
- Risk management
- Loading and unloading
- Local, state, and federal compliance
- Record keeping
Failing to train your drivers in any or all of these topics can result in fines, vehicle damage, and lost revenue.
Focus On Analytics
Analytics is an important part of corporate fleet management and can help you meet the goals you’ve set for your fleet.
Whether you’re motivated by the need for better visibility of your fleet activities, a desire to spend less time tracking down receipts, or the suspicion that one of your drivers is abusing their spending privileges, analytics allows you to examine your fleet data and note where changes need to be made.
Identify the key performance indicators (KPIs) that align with your fleet goals, and then use the data to make the necessary changes and control spending in those areas.
Choose A Smart Fuel Card
As we’ve mentioned, there’s significant value in fuel cards when it comes to your corporate fleet management program — even more so when you choose a smart fuel card.
Legacy fuel cards served a purpose, but as you hire more drivers, cover longer distances, or implement fleet management technology tools, you may discover that the old fuel card program you’ve been using just isn’t cutting it anymore.
Introducing a smart fuel card into your workflow gives you unprecedented control over the spending your drivers do while they’re on the road.
With the right card, you’re able to:
- Set expense limits based on the location of the vehicle
- Set expense limits based on the size of the vehicle’s fuel tank
- Limit spending by day of the week
- Set caps on transaction amounts
- Restrict purchases to fuel only
- Add additional expense categories (e.g., maintenance and parking)
- Restrict spending by time of day
Smart fuel cards can completely change the way you manage your fleet, giving you time-saving integrations, wide card acceptance, more accurate data, top-notch security and, most of all, peace of mind.
Fuel Card Software For Effective Corporate Fleet Management
The Coast fuel card and software can help you simplify and optimize corporate fleet management for your businesses — regardless of its size and vehicle composition.
With the tools Coast brings to the table, you and your drivers will be able to:
- Centralize fleet gas and maintenance expenses
- Purchase fuel anywhere Visa is accepted
- Receive digital copies of receipts
- Track costs
- Protect against fraud
- Keep cards secure
- Set activity notifications and alerts
- Benefit from real-time reporting
- And much more
With Coast, you can integrate with other essential fleet tools — telematics, fleet management software, and others — for more comprehensive corporate fleet management and improved control over every vehicle in your fleet.
For example, when luxury transportation company JED Transportation integrated Coast with Fleetio, their operational efficiency improved. This seamless integration streamlined workflows for their bus division and mechanics, optimizing overall fleet management as a result.
Erin Hutson, one of the owners at JED Transportation, had this to say about the transition: “After switching to Coast, our level of confidence really went up because there are real-time controls that we have in place.”
For more information on how Coast can help your business control fleet costs and streamline your fleet management program, visit CoastPay.com today.
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