Each vehicle has an optimum speed at which it consumes the least fuel. Similarly, each fleet has an optimum efficiency at which it produces the maximum profits. Anything lower than that, i.e. fleet downtime harms the company’s competitiveness and productivity.
The more your vehicles don’t run, the more problematic a situation your business is in. However, there are ways to combat this problem, and we’ll walk you through them in this article.
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| Vehicle Downtime: What is It and How to Combat it |
Effects of Vehicle Downtime
Before we begin to explain how a fleet management system can help reduce downtime, you need to know why you should care about this. Therefore, here we have explained a few negative effects of vehicle downtime on your entire supply chain and management.
- Reduced Productivity: Naturally, the fewer the number of vehicles on the road, the fewer the products you are able to transport. Therefore, even if you have a fleet that can carry 100,000 liters of consignment, you might only be able to transport about 70,000 liters.
- Loss of Revenue: Your business will face loss of revenue in three ways – first through loss of productivity, second through unhappy customers, and third to the maintenance cost of unproductive vehicles.
- Repair Costs: If one of your vehicles has not been on the road for a while, more likely than not, it will require extensive repair before setting out. These repair costs are generally much higher than the general repair costs.
Reasons for Vehicle Downtime
The first step to fixing a problem is identifying it and its effects; the second step is to understand its roots, and the final step is to understand how to tackle it. Therefore, here we present to you some reasons why vehicle downtime might occur:
- Rash Driving: In most cases, when a driver brakes, corners, or accelerates harshly, they ruin the engine and other mechanics of the vehicle. Another unfortunate scenario that can arise from harsh driving is accidents that will obviously lead to vehicle downtime.
- Irregular Maintenance: Most drivers fail to keep a regular record of the vehicle’s maintenance and diagnostics leading to irregular maintenance. Irregular maintenance can lead to inefficient vehicles or even unexpected vehicle freezing.
- Inadequate Vehicles: Some fleet managers do not realize the power they need in their fleet. Therefore, they end up overusing vehicles that were not meant for their operations. This leads the vehicles to break down due to mechanical burn-out.
How Can a Fleet Management System Vehicle Downtime
Have you been wondering if shifting your fleet management to software would be a decent idea? After reading how fleet management software can reduce vehicle downtime, you’ll know that it is not only a decent but a spectacular idea!
- Driver Supervision: If you are suspicious of any vehicle’s low productivity, you can check the driver’s performance through your fleet management software. Understanding and fixing driver behavior will go a long way in preventing accidents and frequent vehicle breakdowns.
- Service Reminders: All you need to do is feed the software your vehicle’s scheduled maintenance. When the time comes close, the software will automatically send you reminders for maintenance.
- Maintenance Alerts: Any fleet management software comes with IoT and OBD sensor integration. Through these sensors, your software will know if a vehicle’s mechanical performance is dropping and will send you an alert about the same.
- Comprehensive Reports: Your software will use all the data collected from all your vehicles and present it in bite-sized information for you. These reports will give you an idea of the kind of performance and load you need so that you can choose vehicles accordingly.
- Analytical Data: Not only can software help you see comprehensive reports, but also analyze them better. Good software come with filters that help you look at a certain issue from different angles. Therefore, you can see what causes vehicle downtime and work to solve the recurring patterns.
- Effective Management: Fleet managers might manually forget some vehicles that might have been in downtime. However, software will never forget any vehicle and will show each vehicle’s running status. This leads to cuts due to fallacies in the management system.
- Low Management Downtime: When you choose software that itself does not have too much downtime, all your vehicles will always be on the radar. The more robust the software, the better your management.
Parting Words
Completely shutting vehicle downtime might be fictitious. Each business needs to be prepared for some amount of downtime. However, it is only through an effective fleet management software such as TrackoBit that you can reduce vehicle downtime as much as possible!
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