3 best practices for sustainable fleet management
Discover some strategies to achieve more sustainable and efficient fleet management.
A sustainable fleet management strategy aims to reduce environmental impacts through actions such as more sustainable vehicles and fuels, operating with the least possible fuel consumption, and reducing the amount of road traffic generated by your fleet.
Learn three best practices for sustainable fleet management to implement in your fleet:
Properly scale your fleet
Defining the correct size of your fleet involves combining your fleet's needs, operations, and mobility with the requirements specified in its mission. As a fleet manager, to properly scale your fleet and make your fleet management more sustainable, start by identifying and eliminate inefficient vehicles. The next step is to replace them, if necessary, with more efficient ones (that use less fuel per km) and use alternative fuels, when available.
The analysis of fleet operations for its correct dimensioning allows fleet managers to identify opportunities to save on travel and maintenance of vehicles throughout their life cycle. It also allows reducing vehicle purchase, fuel consumption, maintenance, and other operating costs.
Reduce mileage traveled
For more sustainable fleet management, companies can implement strategies to reduce the number of kilometers traveled. This way, they can avoid unnecessary journeys that contribute to gas emissions to the environment, vehicle wear, excessive fuel consumption, and time spent on trips that could be used in other tasks.
Strategies to reduce traveled mileage:
- Analyze the need for travel (For example, replacing some salesforce in-person visits with online meetings or phone calls);
- Consolidate routes and trips to eliminate duplication;
- Provide passenger transportation for company staff for high-utilization routes;
- Optimize the time and distance for deliveries using a fleet management system, leading to a more efficient fleet.
Increase your fleet's fuel efficiency
Acquire low consumption vehicles, such as hybrid electric vehicles (HEV's), as they are leaders in terms of fuel economy, without requiring a new alternative supply infrastructure;
Carry out the programmed fleet maintenance and pay attention to your vehicles' pneumatic pressure to keep them in proper working condition;
Provide training for drivers to drive more efficiently, safely, and respecting speed limits, which combined with a defined route planning leads to significant fuel savings;
Avoid idling vehicles, implementing strategies such as the installation of slow idle mitigation systems and the adoption of fleet management systems that alert whenever a vehicle has been idling for more than a specific time;
Carry out a thorough analysis to determine which vehicles are less efficient and consume more fuel to achieve greater fuel efficiency. A widely used strategy to do this type of analysis is the implementation of a fleet management system;
Optimize alternative fuel usage, reducing fossil fuel consumption, and replacing it with other alternatives such as electricity, biodiesel, and renewable diesel blends. To do so, you only need to decide which type of vehicle, alternative fuel, and infrastructure best matches your fleet's location, characteristics, and area of operation.
In short, to achieve more sustainable fleet management, there are several strategies that you can implement in your fleet right away. Moreover, by combining these practices with the implementation of a fleet management system, you will be able to enjoy the most significant benefits possible.