If you’re looking for a way to improve ROI within your fleet, don’t overlook the performance of your fleet drivers. It plays an integral role in your department’s overall success and output.
The Importance of Good Fleet Drivers
Your fleet management strategy is only as strong as your biggest weakness. After that, you can invest everything into processes, frameworks, and standard operating procedures (SOPs). You can even choose the best vehicles and the flashiest technology to support them.
But if you have massive vulnerabilities elsewhere in your organization, none of these things matter. They’ll all be compromised and less effective than they should be. And here’s the cold, hard truth: Your weakest links are your fleet drivers. That’s not a personal knock on them as people (or even as professionals) – it’s just the truth.
Fleet drivers are always going to be the weakest links. That’s because they’re people. And people are never perfect. People make mistakes and are prone to inconsistencies and errors – even on their best days. If you want to succeed with your fleet management strategy, you have to understand this and account for it.
The good news is that fleet drivers also have untapped potential. People can grow, learn, and improve, unlike a tool, which has a limited capacity for what it can and can’t do. As a result, they can constantly get better and yield more value. Your challenge is determining precisely how to extract that value.
4 Ways to Get More Value Out of Your Drivers
As you look for ways to maximize the value of your drivers, here are several helpful strategies that we’ve found to be highly effective:
1. Identify and Address Risky Behaviors
Certain behaviours expose your drivers, vehicles, and organization to greater risk than others. You must identify what these are to address them via strategic training. Some of the big ones include:
- A new study from Be Phone Smart shows that, despite “hands-free” laws going into effect in most states, 23 percent of drivers admit to illegally talking on a handheld phone. A troubling 15 percent say new penalties haven’t made them stop. These numbers are likely quite similar for fleet drivers.
- Speeding is another issue. Most drivers admit to speeding, though most say they try to stay within 10 mph of the speed limit. However, 14 percent admit to driving 11-15 mph over the limit; 4 percent travel 16-29 mph above the limit; and 3 percent of drivers admit driving more than 30 mph over the speed limit.
- Fatigue is another common problem for fleet drivers. Between long shifts, working multiple jobs (sometimes), and not getting enough sleep, it’s easy for drivers to show up exhausted. It leads to slower reaction times and poor behaviours that may be as deadly as alcohol or drug impairment.
2. Invest in Good Vehicle Maintenance
You can’t always blame poor performance on drivers. First, you have to give them safe and efficient vehicles to work with. It requires good vehicle maintenance. Some of this falls on your maintenance crew, while the drivers should handle other tasks.
“Most heavy-duty vehicle maintenance should be conducted by properly trained and certified maintenance crews, but vehicle drivers can conduct daily vehicle inspection,” Cetaris notes. “For best results, drivers should use paper or electronic vehicle inspection forms to ensure they cover all important points.”
A good fleet maintenance system can automate these checklists and make it easy for drivers to inspect vehicles quickly.
3. Use Real-Time Alerts
You can train your drivers to follow certain safety measures, but nothing is more efficient or proactive at correcting risky behaviours than real-time notifications and alerts. Using the best route planner app, you can send a driver instant feedback for abruptly accelerating, speeding, hard-braking, sharp-turning, and even tailgating.
4. Reward Good Behaviors
If you’re only correcting bad behaviours, drivers will become agitated, cynical, and possibly even combative against management. So it’s also important that you reward good behaviours. It helps encourage drivers and shows them that their good decision making isn’t going unnoticed.
Adding it All Up:
The key to successful fleet management is to turn your drivers from liabilities into assets with unlimited potential. Growth is the goal – personally, professionally, and everywhere in between. Use the tips discussed above to improve in this area and become a better fleet manager and leader.
