Fleet Rightsizing: Finding the Perfect Number to Meet Your Needs
It’s not uncommon for fleet inventories to grow over time. When that happens, you can have vehicles that are underutilized, highly specialized, or no longer suitable for your current business demands. You have a fleet with a size and composition that’s not in tune with your needs — that’s out of sync.
Fleet rightsizing can help get your fleet’s size and composition in sync and in line with your needs and objectives. You’ll improve efficiency, conserve fuel, cut fuel and maintenance costs, support sustainability goals, reduce emissions, and improve customer service.
Fleet rightsizing is much more than the name implies. It’s a proactive, comprehensive, and forward-thinking management practice that encompasses the number of vehicles to meet business requirements and the vehicle type, location, and availability.
If you’re considering rightsizing your vehicle inventory, follow along for an overview of best practices to ensure your vehicle inventory minimizes waste, maximizes resource allocation, and meets your business goals and objectives.
Building the Ideal Vehicle Inventory
Fleet rightsizing reduces operating costs and improves efficiency by matching the correct type of vehicle to the right job. Even small changes to fleet size and composition can yield considerable cost savings.
Here’s how to do it — the right way.
Conduct a Fleet Assessment
The first step to fleet rightsizing is a thorough assessment of your current vehicle inventory and use patterns. This includes gathering information on each vehicle, such as type, age, mileage, payloads, fuel consumption, task, and maintenance history.
Next, identify underutilized vehicles, instances of overcapacity, and any inefficiency in your fleet management processes.
Finally, you need to analyze historical data and projections to understand demand fluctuations and seasonal variations.
By following these steps, you’ll gain insight into where to make adjustments to optimize fleet size and composition to your needs.
Define Operational Needs and Priorities
Once you assess your existing fleet, it’s essential to define your operational needs and priorities. Factors to consider include:
- Geographic coverage
- Service levels
- Payload requirements
- Specific equipment needs
To get an overall picture, get input from stakeholders across various areas of operations and together evaluate the vehicle types needed for your routes and tasks to ensure each vehicle serves a purpose and is productive. Additionally, ask for input from drivers on how vehicles are used.
Use Telematics and Fleet Management Software
Telematics and fleet management software give you real-time insight into your fleet operations. The data collected provides information on vehicle location, fuel consumption, driver behavior, maintenance needs, and use.
With this information, you can make more informed, data-driven decisions like whether certain vehicles are needed, which ones are underused, and the exact type needed to maximize efficiency and optimize performance.
Implement Flexible Vehicle Acquisition Strategies
Rather than relying solely on vehicle ownership, explore acquisition strategies such as leasing, renting, and subscription-based services. Doing so can help you with rightsizing your fleet more efficiently and adapting to changing business needs.
For example, leasing allows you to access newer vehicles with lower upfront costs and established monthly payments. With renting, you can scale up or down based on demand without long-term commitments. And subscription services offer all-inclusive packages that cover maintenance, insurance, and roadside assistance.
Make Smarter Vehicle Purchases
To meet business demands, conserve fuel, and considerably cut fuel costs, replacing older vehicles with alternative or more fuel-efficient ones is a rightsizing strategy to consider.
Options to explore, include:
- Transitioning to smaller, more efficient engines
- Choosing lighter vehicles — aluminum frames, smaller components, lighter accessories
- Using alternative fuels and vehicles
Monitor and Make Adjustments
Rightsizing is not a “fix it and forget it” management practice — it’s ongoing. To get it right, rightsizing requires continuous monitoring and adjustments.
To that end, establish KPIs to track metrics, including fleet use, fuel efficiency, maintenance costs, and customer satisfaction. Regularly review metrics and compare them against benchmarks and targets. This will help you identify areas for improvement and corrective actions you may need to take regarding your vehicle inventory.
Don’t forget to monitor yourself also — stay on top of industry trends, technology, and regulatory changes that may affect your rightsizing or other fleet management strategies.