Every business that wants to optimize profits must deduce ways to cut down on costs. For fleet business, fuel costs undeniably lead in the expenditure sheet.
Well, fuel prices keep fluctuating. And the fleet industry has no control over this. Nonetheless, fleet managers can integrate the fuel data into fleet management and optimize fleet fuel usage.
Why Fuel Data is Important
A quick analysis of your fleet expenditure will tell you that fuel costs account for a significant percentage of your fleet expenses. This means that you must find a way to control your vehicle's fuel consumption to achieve every other business's goal — increasing profits. To do this, you must innovate a better way to collect and analyze the fuel data from your fleet.
The Inefficiency of Manually Collecting Fuel Data
Old is not always gold! The old way of collecting fuel data has proven to be ineffective.
Manually monitoring the mileage and comparing it with fuel receipts introduces a number of challenges. First, there is the aspect of human error. It's common for people entering the data into the spreadsheet to erroneously put down incorrect numbers. Besides, drivers may misplace receipts. Furthermore, manually collecting data for tens or hundreds of fleets is unquestionably time-consuming.
These inefficiencies in data entry and calculations are carried over to fuel forecasting. The eventual result is poor resource allocation and budgeting for the fleet business. For example, you can swiftly run into cash flow problems if you initially underestimate your fleet fuel budget.
With a fleet management system, you can automate this task and reap the benefits of real-time fuel data collection and analysis.
How Fuel Tracking Ensures Efficiency
Fleet management software can easily help you track your mileage accurately, thus giving you the ability to predict fuel usage precisely. Additionally, a fleet tracking system will enable you to analyze data technologically and get vital insights on how to optimize your fleet's fuel usage. For instance, you can easily know where there is overconsumption and quickly make required adjustments to resolve the issue.
Likewise, fleet management software is capable of helping you manage and maintain the health of your fleet. This is possible by tracking things like an engine idling, harsh driving, vehicle performance, and frequent routes taken. The most exciting part is that the system is able to analyze this data and suggest better ways to improve your fleet fuel consumption.
Other benefits of integrating your fuel data into fleet management include:
- Reduced fuel theft: With the right software, it'll be next to impossible for any of your vehicles to get refueled above the tank limit and not know about it. The software can also notify when fuel consumption for a specific vehicle skyrockets above the usual trend.
- Timely Maintenance: Correct mileage tracking also means that you can schedule preventive fleet maintenance and repair on time and thus cut repair costs
GPS Enabled Fleet Management System Guarantees Full Advantage
Apart from fuel tracking, a GPS fleet management system can help you reduce driver behaviors that waste fuel. For instance, an idle engine can consume approximately a gallon of fuel per hour. Assuming several drivers are leaving engines idle, this can drain your business profits.
In essence, fleet managers can easily set thresholds within the system and be notified when sneaky drivers practice these poor driving habits — engine idling, harsh driving, speeding, etc. For example, you can set an automatic system notification to get an alert if a driver sustains a speed of over 10 miles/hour over the speed limit for more than a minute. You can easily use this to pass down necessary feedback and ensure safe driving.
The Bottom Line
Fuel tracking is a crucial part that should be integrated into your fleet management. Integrating fuel data into fleet management allows you to lower your fuel costs and increase your business profits. While this is possible within an in-house setting, enlisting the help of a seasoned fleet management company can improve the result, and lower management costs too. That's where Wimar Inc. comes in handy.
At Wilmar Inc., we'll curate a business-specific fleet solution that's consistent with your company's needs and goals. To get started and learn more, contact us now.
