Trying to keep your fleet’s fuel budget under control can be frustrating. With constantly rising fuel costs it’s more important than ever to keep a close eye on your fuel stocks.
In the following post I’ll be discussing how you can improve your fuel efficiency rates, reduce wastage and eliminate the risks of fuel fraud.
As a Fleet Manager, you have a tough job on your hands trying to make sure your fleet meets the desired operational targets.
Other than the cost of buying new fleet vehicles, fuel expenditure is usually one of the highest overheads that needs to be managed.
No doubt, you are continuously looking at ways to cut the costs of keeping your fleet moving. So improving fuel management is a high priority that needs constant monitoring.
Let's take a look at some effective ways to help reduce and improve your fleet fuel consumption.
A very efficient way to keep on top of your fleet fuel costs is to use a fuel management system.
Using an effective fuel management system will help you to make considerable savings at the pumps. You can collect and analyse valuable data to assist with your fuel management.
You can use this information to deliver invaluable fuel management information to identify areas where you can make savings and take proactive steps to fight fuel theft.
According to an article released from Fleet News, fellow fleet managers are concerned that they will ‘cease to exist' unless the embracement of big data happens.
The article suggests: “Some employees with fleet management responsibility had an “inability to measure, manage and monitor vehicles and drivers”.
There is no denying that the fleet management industry is forever changing. And that means it’s essential for you as a fleet manager to keep up with new developments. Most importantly in vehicle technology and new systems adoption to help improve fleet fuel consumption and performance.
Adopting effective new technologies such as fuel management systems can make a big difference in your operational performance levels.
Using such a system, equipped with cloud-based fuel management tools, will enable you to observe and monitor your fleet’s fuel use and transaction information.
More specifically, you will save on administrative costs by using this solution to monitor individual drivers fuel expenses.
A large part of a fleet manager’s job is taken up with managing the costs related to fuel consumption. By having access to accurate data from your fuel management system, you can analyse the data to make more accurate projections for fuel costs and usage.
This will assist you to keep control of your fleet fuel consumption and spot issues where your projections and actual fuel use doesn't add up.
Additionally, you will be alerted to possible fuel fraud or poor driver performance that can then be managed and addressed. This will help you to meet with your operational objectives and targets.
Many fellow fleet managers incentivise their drivers for achieving good performance levels. Primarily, that’s for meeting fuel efficiency targets or meeting/maintaining high-levels of driving performance to help reduce fuel use.
While offering incentives to your fleet drivers may not be practical, you can still implement performance targets for your drivers to meet.
Such targets will encourage your drivers to use better driving habits an in-turn make a significant contribution to your fuel consumption savings.
There are a significant number of extra benefits which you can gain from using a fuel management system. These include:
Your metrics can help you to monitor efficiency and make improvements where needed.
Adopting a fuel management system can help by giving you a solid insight into your fleet performance and operating costs.
By taking control in this way, you can more easily monitor and measure data which directly impacts the costs of refuelling your fleet.
I hope the information I’ve brought you here will prove useful. If you want to find out more about fuel management systems call us on 0113 2012 460.