Fleet Management – Proper Maintenance Guaranteed

The task of administrating a company’s vehicle fleet is termed as the fleet management and it is an effective mode for both fleet owners and managers to monitor their cars, trucks or vehicles properly. This method entails processes like vehicle tracking, mechanical diagnostics, management of ships, fleet security and control, remote vehicle disabling and driver behavior tracking.

The main objective underlying fleet administration include controlling the overall operating cost, maintaining a company's fleet of vehicles and equipment, preserving vehicles and equipment in a manner that extends their useful life, controlling the growth in size of the fleet, standardizing the composition of the fleet and to accurately budget for maintenance and replacement costs.

The tasks discussed

One of the most basic functions of all fleet management systems is vehicle tracking. Usually it is GPS-based, but at times, it is based on a cellular triangulation platform. Next is mechanical diagnostic, which implies gathering details on mileage, fuel consumption, etc into a global statistics scheme. Progressive fleet management system can connect to the on-board computer of the vehicle and thus gather data for the user. Driver behavior tracking is another important task and it can be done by combining information from the earlier two processes.

Fleet administration also implies management of those ships, which are at sea. The fleet managing companies generally take charge of aspects like crewing, maintenance and day-to-day operations. Remote vehicle disabling also comes within fleet administration purview. It allows the authorized users stuck in a remote place, the ability to prevent an engine from starting, stop the movement of a vehicle and to halt or slow down an operating vehicle. Remote disabling system can also be unified into a remote panic and emergency notification system.

Fleet management also entails the timely substitution of vehicles and machineries. It requires the ability to foresee asset life cycles based on information on costing, utilization and asset age. Considering these data, the fleet managers establish the expected date for a specific class of equipment that in turn can be used to identify the replacement dates and funding requirements. Funding is also an important aspect and it assures the proper maintenance of the fleets.

For the effective mode of fleet administration, fleet management software comes to great aid. It equips the managers with the tools that they need for the day-to-day management of the in-house shop. Depending on the capacity of the software, it can handle all intermediate operations from acquisition to disposal, like driver/vehicle profiling, trip profiling, dispatch, vehicle efficiency, etc. and it can provide remote control features such as Geo-fencing and active disabling.

Benefits of fleet management

Fleet management demands a lot of management and organization skill. However, if practiced properly, it yields several benefits. Some of the major benefits include reduced costs and improved efficiency, employee satisfaction, time saving, updated information regarding the fleet, timely replacement of vehicles and enhanced customer satisfaction.