Several companies depend on commercial vehicles to run their business activities. Generally, business leaders aim to cut down the maintenance costs of their vehicles and retain the bulk of their profit.
Whether you manage a small or large fleet, there are several ways to cut down on your fleet maintenance costs.
The quote maintenance is safer than repair plays out in fleet maintenance. Corporations spend almost $860 every year on commercial vehicle maintenance.
Proper maintenance is mandatory because of the high cost of repairing and replacing vehicles.
In this article, we’ll share the types of fleet maintenance costs and the best ways to cut down on fleet maintenance costs.
What Is A Fleet Management
Fleet management refers to the different methods fleet dealers adopt to improve the maintenance of their commercial vehicles.
Brands that use commercial vehicles to run their business need a fleet management program to manage the fleet effectively. Fleet management ensures company vehicles are safe for daily operations.
What Are The Types Of Fleet Maintenance
Fleet Preventive Maintenance
Fleet preventive maintenance involves regular checkups and maintenance on commercial vehicles to prevent possible breakdowns.
It’s a type of fleet maintenance where the fleet manager regularly supervises the vehicles to detect any existing or potential issues. Preventive maintenance aims to reduce cost and increase the vehicle’s lifecycle.
Preventive maintenance is split into two types
- Time-based preventive maintenance
It focuses on performing periodic reviews of company vehicles. Time-based preventive maintenance ranges from weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly.
- Usage-based preventive maintenance
Usage-based maintenance involves inspecting vehicles after a specific period of use. Some companies maintain their vehicles after traveling for a certain distance.
Fleet Corrective And Reactive Maintenance
Fleet corrective maintenance or reactive maintenance refers to unplanned maintenance. Here, the vehicle breaks down completely before it is fixed or replaced.
However, it’s only acceptable when such a breakdown would not cause harm to the environment or the company.
11 Ways To Cut Down On Fleet Maintenance Costs
1. Analyze Fleet Costs
Vehicles are expensive in marketplaces. Thus, the need to maintain them. Tracking and monitoring costs are essential in fleet maintenance. You need to understand how much money goes into repairing and servicing vehicles.
Getting a hand on vehicle maintenance expenses allows you to identify necessary and irrelevant expenses.
Fleet supervisors often need to pay more attention to specific cost details that get out of control. Sometimes, even with a budget, certain costs associated with maintaining a fleet go unnoticed, particularly when spontaneous repairs get into the picture.
To check costs and understand the chances of lowering your fleet’s running costs, you also need to assess your expenses in various ways.
Cost analysis also gives you a comprehensive picture of your fleet, allowing you to compare expenses across the board and decide on proactive service and preventative maintenance.
2. Develop A Maintenance Strategy
Drawing out a strategy is a great way to reduce maintenance costs. You’ll need to write down the causes of the increase in maintenance costs. Afterward, you draw up a scale of preference and cut out unnecessary expenses.
Your maintenance strategy has to be one that would serve the long term and with sustainable practices.
3. Reduce The Number Of Vehicles
They say the best solutions are always the simplest ones, which is true. It is no different because the more vehicles you operate, the higher the maintenance costs.
Reducing the number of vehicles is the most proven way to reduce fleet costs.
The average cost of owning a light or medium-duty vehicle must range from 5000 to 8000 dollars per vehicle. So, reducing them would save you a lot of money.
Though the workload of the remaining vehicles will increase, it will result in a net decrease in the overall maintenance cost.
4. Cut Down On Unnecessary Trips
Cutting trips is an easy-to-understand practice. However, in this case, most fleet managers and owners have their hands tied.
An excellent way to solve this problem is to get involved in vehicle operations like monitoring the driver’s route number of deliveries or sales to a particular route. This is done to help one know what routes are necessary and which are just bad for business.
5. Properly Train The Drivers
94% to 96% of all auto accidents result from human error. If you employ expert drivers or train existing drivers, the maintenance cost due to accidents will drop drastically.
You must ensure that every driver is suitably trained and has proof of training before you get them onboard.
6. Hire Properly Trained Drivers
If a company doesn’t have time to train its drivers, it needs to hire an expert. It’s the best alternative to teaching them yourself. Though they may come off as qualified, they must be properly tested to see if they earn their resume.
7. Upgrade The Outdated Parts
As earlier stated, 94% to 96% of the causes of road accidents and vehicle damages. With 4 to 6 percent caused by faulty parts and other external factors.
Such parts are either faulty or outdated, which is very dangerous. It is prevented by checking and replacing faulty and obsolete parts of your vehicles.
This would save you from the cost of accidents which I assure you would be much more expensive. Asides from saving costs, replacing your obsolete parts with newer ones would make your vehicles more efficient.
8. Utilizing Technology For Your Benefit
Fleet maintenance software is one of the most excellent methods to deal with vehicle maintenance. It provides a wealth of information that is analyzed to identify areas where your business will improve or save money.
To sum up, maintenance schedules ought to be utilized to coordinate workforce, parts, and other facets of fleet maintenance operations.
They are a component of asset management and, when used properly, will serve as the hub of a fleet maintenance process that encourages efficiency and benefits in the long term.
9. Create And Adhere To Fleet Maintenance Plans
The simplest things, like following maintenance schedules, greatly impact your budget if you don’t perform them.
Since you plan effectively to manage your company’s vehicles, understanding how long a service interval will take alongside the parts, technicians, tools, and shop space required makes scheduling maintenance work easy to predict.
The planning and, more significantly, the execution of a maintenance program results in higher-quality work and increased shop productivity, resulting in lower costs.
10. Prioritize Smart Fuel Usage
When it comes to fleet maintenance, fuel is among the highest costs. This is an expense you mustn’t cut out because of how essential it is to the vehicle’s movement.
Though it mustn’t be cut out of expenses, that doesn’t mean it mustn’t be reduced. One way this must be done is by aiming for a larger average value of miles per hour among your fleet.
This must further be done by upgrading the parts of your fleets to those that are very fuel efficient.
Another way is to train your drivers on the importance of proper fuel usage. Also, the drivers need to be encouraged to turn off the ignition when not in use and remove the keys when not in use.
11. Reduced Lifecycle Costs
Senior-level executives believe that often replacing vehicles adds unneeded expenses to the fleet budget and advise fleet managers to keep their vehicles until they reach an older asset age.
Many businesses keep and use their vehicles much past the point at which they are most economically viable, leading to high maintenance expenses, increased fuel expenditures due to the vehicles’ declining fuel efficiency, and decreased usage.
The use of an outdated fleet is a holdover from earlier procedures, a lack of capital funds, or a failure to explain the advantages and disadvantages of prompt fleet replacement adequately.
Optimizing replacement cycles and adhering to the proper cycles are prerequisites for lowering vehicle lifecycle costs.
The best fleet management companies use economic-based replacement planning instruments for objectively determining the appropriate lifecycles for replacing vehicles.
The fleet manager must create short- and long-term replacement plans after considering all pertinent aspects (such as the original new vehicle cost, a realistic estimated resale value, fuel, repair, and personal use costs).
Fleet Maintenance Costs Are Easy To Manage
Maintenance costs are always fairer than replacement costs. Vehicle supervisors need to have a long-term perspective and keep the big picture in mind when maintaining their vehicles and assets.
Generally, saving money on vehicle repair and replacement via maintenance will result in a significant reduction in recurring expenses.
This article provides the best ways to reduce operational fleet management expenses. Hence, increasing the chances of companies effectively managing their commercial vehicles.
Ella Marcotte
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