When it comes to managing the cost of your company's fleet of vehicles, what is your strategy? Business owners today are at the intersection of expense management and day-to-day operations; needing to control costs and enforce usage and operational efficiency plans, they are stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to balancing the theory and practice of cost-cutting and budgeting.
There is help on the fleet management side. With a few key tools - which collectively make up what is known as a fleet management kit - businesses can be protected against wasted time and money, costly repairs that could have been prevented, and one of the biggest wildcards in operating a fleet of vehicles: the cost of fuel.
Your fleet management kit: easy ways to save
Today, there are standard tools in the fleet management kit - including dedicated fleet cards purchased through a provider, wireless vehicle tracking and diagnostics (also known as telematics) and fuel buying services - that give the modern business owner information around vehicle use in the constant effort to help them gain efficiencies and realize savings.
Dedicated fleet cards, which allow you to set limits and monitor employee purchases, capture usage information and provide insights into driver behavior. Paired with a telematics system - which involves GPS-like tracking and vehicle diagnostics - business owners can monitor usage, track time on the road, optimize the efficiency of drivers' routes, send them to best-price fueling locations, and be alerted if there is a performance or maintenance issue. Are your drivers idling in parking lots for extended periods of time, filling up at high-cost stations or driving around with the "Check Engine" light on? A telematics program can tell you.
Ultimately though, fleet management programs that combine the power of a dedicated fleet card with the benefits of telematics and better fuel buying are still faced with fuel price volatility. The bottom-line impact of that volatility can be virtually eliminated with a financial product that either sets the price of fuel, sets a range for the price of fuel or sets a ceiling for the price of fuel.