Workforce Management and the Return on Investment: Vehicles, Part II

Last week, we explored the management of the vehicles within your workforce. We primarily focused on the benefit that tracking your equipment provides against theft. While defending against theft is imperative, it is not the only way to manage the non-human components of your workforce.

Vehicles, in order to continue to contribute to your business effectively, require constant inspection and careful attention paid to how they are used. Vehicular management can present itself in the flavors of the maintenance of the vehicle’s parts to ensure it remains a part of the fleet and a detailed look at the vehicle’s fuel consumption to combat unnecessary expenses.

Maintenance

Your workforce is a machine, and for it to operate efficiently, it requires routine maintenance. Your vehicles are, literally, no different. While maintenance of vehicles is imperative, more often than not, people will address maintenance issues after they have arisen. Whether it be due to neglect or forgetfulness, this approach is reactive and can be detrimental to your equipment.

Once again, we look at Paul’s Pool Cleaning & Construction Company. Paul employs ten cleaners, each of whom drives one of the trucks in Paul’s fleet. Knowing that Paul has implemented dispatching, we can conclude that each of these ten workers completes six assignments each day. Each driver generates $600 per day and $3,000 per work week.

Now, let’s assume that Paul forgets to take two of his trucks in for their routine inspection. The result is a wrecked engine, requiring a full replacement. The cost incurred by each replacement is $3,000, but Paul’s business also suffers the loss of revenue generated by both vehicles. Had Paul invested in a software with a maintenance alert function, he could have been proactive about the care of his vehicles and potentially avoided the impact to his business.

Idling Time

Maintaining the integrity of your fleet requires careful attention paid to the consumption of fuel by said fleet. Focusing on idling vehicles, trucks burn a gallon of fuel for every hour spent idling. With the average price of fuel in the United States being $2 per gallon, if Paul’s drivers left their vehicles on during every cleaning job, they would be idling for six hours per day.

52 Weeks/Year

X 5 Workdays/Week

260 Workdays/Year

X 6 Hours Idling/Day

1,560 Hours Idling/Year

X $2/Gallon of Gas

$3,120 of Fuel Spent Idling by Each Truck/Year

X 10 Trucks

$31,200 Fuel Spent Idling by the Fleet/Year

Potentially, Paul could spend over thirty thousand dollars on fuel just because vehicles were left running. Should Paul invest and install in software that relays whether the vehicle is turned off whenever it is stopped, he could save his company thousands of dollars in the years to come.

Utilizing software that allows you to stay on top of your vehicle maintenance as well as cut back on fuel consumption simply makes sense. With the streamlining of all of your business’s processes as the goal, you must take care to never forget about the vehicles in your fleet. Witness the immense returns after investing in the management of your fleet!
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