With the transport and haulage industry seeing a 173% increase in insolvencies over the past couple of years, it’s never been more important to keep costs down. How to reduce costs in fleet management is a question on many business decision-makers’ minds, and the success of their companies may well be determined by the solutions they choose. Here are our top methods of reducing your company expenses, whether you’re overspending on fuel, insurance, maintenance or mileage.

Use fuel cards with fixed weekly rates

Fuel cards are an excellent way to reduce fleet fuel costs, allowing drivers to pay for fuel with a card linked to your company’s account. Many fuel card providers offer fixed weekly rates, which can protect you from fluctuating fuel prices and provide significant savings compared to paying at the pump. Fuel cards also come with additional benefits, such as detailed fuel usage reports, which can help you identify areas for improvement in driver behavior and fuel efficiency.

Train employees on fuel-efficient driving

Fuel is one of the biggest costs of fleet management. Whether you pay for diesel, HVO, petrol or electrical charges, the price of keeping your fleet running may well be one of your largest expenses. Running training on fuel-efficient driving can help to prevent your employees from displaying bad driving habits on the road, burning excess fuel and raising your expenses.

Reduce your fuel consumption

In general, reducing your fuel consumption will help to reduce fleet costs and cut down your business expenses. There are several ways to increase the fuel efficiency - and in turn, reduce the carbon footprint - of your fleet, including swapping out diesel for HVO fuel, monitoring your driver’s performance and keeping your vehicles well maintained. By putting all of these into practice, you could remove unnecessary fuel expenses and improve the efficiency of your whole fleet.

Monitor your vehicle performance

Given aggressive driving can significantly increase fuel consumption, tracking the performance of your vehicles can be an excellent way to achieve fleet management cost savings. You can do this directly with a fitted GPS tracker, keeping you up-to-date on the location and speed of each vehicle. The system will also send you alerts to flag up issues such as speeding, sharp breaking and rapid acceleration. You can then address these issues with the driver, helping you to fix problem areas with direct action.

Replace short distance vehicles with EVs

Electric vehicles are becoming increasingly popular with commuters, company cars and delivery services. With recent upgrades to battery life and EV charging points cropping up far more frequently across the UK, it’s becoming a cost-effective solution to invest in electrical engines for short-distance fleets. EVs benefit from more consistent pricing than fossil fuels, and you’ll be able to take advantage of regular nightly price drops. If it’s not feasible to sell your fleet and reinvest, you can always lease EV vehicles to conduct your operations.

Install your own EV chargers

If you make the decision to switch to a more economical EV fleet, installing your own EV chargers can save you from paying additional fees charged by third party services. When you operate your own EV chargers, you can even create a new income stream for your business by allowing other drivers to charge at them. This solution works well for short distance vehicles such as vans and commercial cars that will be charging at the same port every night.

Streamline administrative processes

Fleet administration takes time, resources and money, especially if your team is monitoring journeys and vehicles individually. Tracking the activity of your fleet can be streamlined with the Kinesis software, allowing your team to run reports, view the performance of vehicles, check fuel efficiency and flag up unnecessary detours and trips. With all of the necessary information in one place, you can implement solutions and cut down on expenses with ease.

Cut out unnecessary journeys

In the same vein, you can cut down on unnecessary trips by identifying inefficient practices in your company. These may include taking detours, getting stuck in traffic at busy bottlenecked roads and doubling back on routes because of poorly prioritised delivery lists. Using our e-route tool, you can plan efficient journeys in advance and cut down on excess fuel and charging expenses.

Take out a fleet insurance policy

Insuring every vehicle in your fleet individually is time consuming and expensive. If you have a fleet of any size, batching up your vehicles under one insurance policy with fleet insurance is likely to be the most cost-effective solution for you. Radius will search the market for you to find the best deals for the needs of your fleet, preventing you from spending extra money on the same amount of cover. You may also be able to save money on your insurance premiums by installing Thatcham-approved trackers.

Get rid of degraded vehicles

Every vehicle has a lifespan. This can range from a few years to two decades or more and depends on the make and maintenance of the engine. If your fleet has been around for a long time, it’s likely that some of your assets have worn down beyond repair. Most of them will have gone to the scrapyard already, but some could still be scraping past their MOTs. Old and degraded vehicles will break down more frequently, costing tow charges and repair fees, and can use up fuel far more quickly than newer models. Removing and replacing them can save your company plenty of unnecessary expenses in the long run.

How to reduce fleet costs

It can be expensive and time consuming to make some of these changes in-house, especially when you’re testing the waters with saving money. You don’t want to under-invest in important aspects of your fleet, or overpay for fuel, electricity and repair work. At Radius, we can analyse your energy usage for you, offering bespoke recommendations and support to help you cut down your business expenses. We’ll also negotiate contract terms and pricing for you, taking the pressure off your shoulders.