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Fleets are not cheap to manage. And with certain costs such as maintenance and gas, the price tag that comes with managing your fleet may skyrocket when not kept in check. However, there are many ways we can lower such cost and many of which could be easily managed in your fleet with the help of fleet management technologies.
Seat belts may seem like the most easy option out of all but their usefulness cannot be underestimated. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the US, safety seat belts saved an average of 14,955 lives in 2017. Other than that, up to 47% of the passengers killed in fatal accidents were not wearing seatbelts at the time of the accident. With our trucking software, fleet managers can monitor and remind drivers to buckle up from the ELD solution installed in their trucks. Fleet managers can set parameters in the software to be notified whenever trucks reach a certain speed limit and when the driver has no seatbelt on. According to the FMCSA, a crash with injuries costs up to $200,000 and a crash involving fatalities can cost up to $3.6 million per crash. Making sure your drivers wear their seatbelts not only ensures the risk is lowered for fatalities and serious injuries, but it also makes sure your company doesn’t end up paying a hefty amount due to a minor mistake.
According to the Insurance Hotlines, speeding is one of the top reasons for fatal accidents on the highway. Ensuring drivers receive proper training on truck driving as well as how to deal with passenger vehicles speeding around the truck can help avert most of the common accidents. Other than that, accurate information such as mileage and timesheets can help ensure drivers leave on time and reduce the need to speed. Setting appropriate goals for your drivers using such information can also help enforce the importance of safe driving over the need to “complete” a job on time. Once again, you will end up saving a lot of money by avoiding accidents and ensuring that everyone on the highway is getting to their destinations safely.
According to Natural Resources Canada, Canadians idle around 8 minutes in winter and about 40% of that in the summer. And every 10 minutes of idling would cost about 1 quarter of a liter of gas. Now if we do a rough estimate, a driver that idles 24 minutes daily for 5 days would waste 12 liters of gasoline. That would amount to about 21.24 dollars according to gas prices right now. Now multiply that by the average size of 10 trucks a fleet and that would cost you about $11024 just on gasoline spent idling.
Contrary to popular belief, idling an engine in the winter does not help warm it up. In fact, the engine starts warming up as soon as the driver starts driving.
Accidents are costly. And preventing them should be of first priority to your company. Not only will lives be saved, but you are potentially saving millions of dollars by investing in ELD solutions and softwares that help with managing your fleet. Your pockets will thank you and so will your accountants. Click here to get a quote for our ELD solutions.
