How to get your fleet administration right

Good fleet administration is difficult because of the number of responsibilities assigned to the manager.

These include improving fleet performance, reducing expenses, identifying the best value for money (such as for fuel and tire repairs), ensuring safety, and so on. All these actions also depend on collecting and analyzing data.

Each of these responsibilities relates to one of the major areas of fleet management. If you are still not clear on what they are, we explain them below.

Vehicle management

This goes beyond knowing where a vehicle is and how far it has traveled. You need broader control: knowing its load capacity, year and age, which problems it has had and which services have been performed, which tires are installed, and so on.

Every detail you can think of about the vehicle should be recorded. It is the best way to ensure safe and efficient control in vehicle management.

Tire management

Tires are considered fleets' second-largest expense, behind fuel alone. That is why tire management is increasingly recognized as an area that needs its own manager.

Or, at least, managers acquire specific tools to keep control of fleet tire data.

This management requires measuring the tread depth and pressure of each tire individually. This allows the system to identify unusual wear and possible causes and solutions.

Tire control prevents casing loss, increases the possibilities for retreading and extends tires' useful life.

Preventive maintenance

No fleet can survive for long without preventive maintenance plans. The vehicle checklist is an essential tool! It is useful for daily journeys as well as long trips.

In other words, the schedule can include daily, weekly, fortnightly inspections, etc. After all, you do not need just one checklist model. Whether using paper or a digital checklist, you can customize the questionnaires to use whenever appropriate.

What matters is that preventive maintenance is carried out and fulfills its role: preventing problems!

Prevention also helps you control other matters in the fleet. For example, repair parts inventory or repair costs and costs per kilometer for each vehicle.

Corrective maintenance

This is the area of fleet administration you want to avoid. Obviously, we mean avoiding having the vehicle reach that point. If you thought you should forget about a broken vehicle in the garage, we need to have a serious conversation.

Although corrective maintenance also aims to fix problems found through prevention, it more commonly happens by “accident.” This is because breakdowns and wear in parts go unnoticed without planned vehicle inspections.

When the manager's goal is to save money and reduce spending, corrective maintenance becomes a particular concern. It costs far more than investing in preventive maintenance!

Fleet monitoring

To monitor the fleet, you can choose a telematics system — the most comprehensive option available today. Along with knowing where a vehicle is, it gives you data such as which vehicles are currently on a route, the mileage traveled and the trip's average speed.

Like automation, having real-time information is part of what we call logistics 4.0 (the technological revolution in logistics). In other words, the moment we are living in now.

We increasingly see fleet administration tasks being taken over by technology, and telematics is part of this too. A very important part, in fact. An ideal way to keep control of the routes used, driving style and fuel consumption.

Legal matters

There is no escaping them. To avoid fines and even interruptions to the transport company's activities, you also need to pay attention to legal matters.

Preventive maintenance itself is already part of this topic: in Brazil, before putting a vehicle on public roads, the driver must check that its equipment is present and in good working order.

In Brazil, this also includes obtaining vehicle license plates. Payment of levies and taxes, of course. And registrations, permits and licenses to operate and transport certain loads must be kept up to date.

Financial management

The financial side of fleet administration sometimes receives more attention than the others.

The reason is simple: everything is affected by it and affects it.

Every action that costs money affects financial resources. At the same time, if you need a budget to invest in a new vehicle, you need to go through financial management.

Furthermore, if you need to reduce costs, you have to start with the sources of the largest expenses.

Larger companies usually have specific people in charge of finances, while the fleet manager can focus more on operational processes and data. However, the manager should still keep a close eye on everything to make informed decisions.

Do you want even more knowledge and tips to help your fleet management mature? Check out our free resource – An exclusive guide to INCREASING efficiency in your fleet management (in Portuguese)