Across vastly different sectors in the economy, one of the key drivers behind success is optimization. This word essentially means maximizing your available resources in order to deliver the highest possible value – in terms of profits – for the least-possible overheads. And this rule applies to fleets as well as to banks, retailers, and tech startups. In this article, we’ll look at how fleet managers can work towards delivering the optimal service, reducing the prices you charge customers, and gaining an important competitive edge over your regional rivals.
Planning
First up, let’s take a look at the way you plan routes and dispatches at the moment. You’ll undoubtedly already have a system to manage this – usually using software that also tracks the positions of every truck in your database. But it may not be running smart, AI-enabled software that can cut corners for you to find the best possible routes for your trucks to drive.
Enter the new generation of route optimization software, which has been designed with smarter analytics and planning features that’ll help you to make better use of your available resources every month. Depending on the size of your fleet, these planning wizards can save you thousands of dollars each month, ensuring you can take more business without expanding your fleet.
Personnel
When you run a fleet, you’ll know that your drivers are more important than anything else. Hire the best drivers in the business, and you’ll be able to rely on steady, trustworthy personnel who will get the job done on time and to standard. Hire cheaper, less experienced drivers, and you may be less able to run complex optimization plans because they may simply be too unreliable to make just-in-time deliveries work for your firm.
If you’re planning on squeezing more value out of your available trucks and drivers, then the first port of call will have to be a review of your personnel. Be prepared to hire excellent drivers and pay your best drivers a little more, including in bonus payments, to retain the best talent for your optimization plans.
Partnerships
Some clients will be more profitable to work with than others. For instance, if you’re delivering haulage services for a firm that operates throughout the country, you’ll be sending drivers across different ports and states in zig-zags in order to deliver the products and loads they are asking for to different locations. Meanwhile, a firm with a single base requires much less planning and leads to fewer delays.
Depending on your pricing structure, it might be more efficient and optimal for you to seek partnerships where you can be sure that you’re going to deliver seamlessly time after time, rather than those that complicate your dispatch planning significantly. So, when you’re seeking new partnerships for your firm, do consider whether they will help to simplify your delivery matrix or whether this new work might throw your firm’s plans into disarray.
Optimizing your fleet is a case of thinking clearly about the planning, the personnel, and the partnerships you invest in. Better investments equal a more optimized set of resources – saving you cash and gaining you higher profits.
To read more on topics like this, check out the Business category
Leave a Reply