We all make New Year’s resolutions and many of the personal ones are often hard to adhere to, but when it comes to business, resolve is important.
In her first IdeaXchange blog of 2018, Jane Clark, Vice President of Member Services for NationaLease discussed the one resolution that every fleet owner and manager should keep: conducting an in-depth review of their fleet operations.
In her blog, Jane lists five areas that deserve special attention:
- Vehicle specs – Regardless of what new technology is available, the vehicles you have are the vehicles you have to work with so maybe simply tweaking a vehicle spec could get you some benefits, including increased safety or more efficient use of fuel.
- Safety training – It’s important to build a safety culture that dominates your team every day of the year, not just during Operation Safe Driver Week.
- Better MPGs – Don’t rely on the vehicle alone to show better miles per gallon. Often, driver behavior can also effect fuel consumption. As Jane notes, squeezing every tenth of a mile out of a gallon of fuel can make a major difference.
- Improved operational efficiency – Three important steps should be taken to make your fleet more efficient: right size your fleet, explore ways to optimize routing, and eliminate empty back hauls.
- Finding the right people – Recruitment and retention are major problems for all of us in the industry. Good people are grabbed as soon as they become available. To make your company one that qualified people gravitate towards, it is important to review all your recruitment, onboarding, and retention processes.
Paying attention to these five important areas is a great way to start off a new year that will be focused on success.
