Category:
Fleet Management
Driver Behavior: The Innovative Way to Cut Vehicle Maintenance Costs
One of the key goals of every fleet manager is to maximize the up-to-standard performance of its vehicles while minimizing maintenance costs. They know all too well the ripple effect of costs caused by unexpected vehicle downtime: in fact, the repair costs themselves are often small compared to the cost of disrupted schedules, dissatisfied customers, replacement vehicle hiring and more. That’s why many fleets invest in vehicle health monitoring technologies, such as GreenRoad Connect™, that identify maintenance issues in time to prevent them from erupting into unexpected problems.
However, many fleet managers overlook another major contributing factor to vehicle maintenance issues and costs – a factor that companies can immediately begin improving to create rapid cost reductions: driver behavior.
Unsafe driving is the major cause of accidents, which almost always lead to significant repair costs alongside the other types of risk and disruption that they cause. From a less “dramatic” but equally expensive point of view, unsafe driving is also a major cause of excessive vehicle wear and tear. While all vehicles experience some amount of wear and tear when they are driven, maneuvers like revving the engine, speeding, taking sharp turns, and slamming on or riding the brakes create additional stress on a vehicle’s engine, transmission, brakes, and tires.
Use of the GreenRoad Driver Safety Platform helps drivers develop a smooth, safge driving style that minimizes ongoing vehicle wear-and-tear. It does this by providing drivers with real-time, in-vehicle coaching that alerts them about the safety level of every turn, deceleration, and stop they make, along with hundreds of other maneuvers. When used in combination with top-down company engagement programs, this technology can turn the most impulsive and aggressive drivers into responsible drivers focused on safety – and this leads to tangible bottom-line improvements in vehicle maintenance costs.
Moreover, focusing on driver behavior keeps drivers – and their passengers and cargo – safer, healthier and happier. It can positively affect other line items at the same time, including insurance rates, and even the costs that come from driver disengagement, like employee turnover and absenteeism.
If you don’t have a comprehensive program in place to improve driver behavior over every mile of every trip, look deeper into the opportunities available that can protect your drivers, reduce wear and tear on your fleet, and keep your bottom line trending in the right direction.
