Overcoming Fleet Maintenance Agility for an efficient operation

Improved fleet maintenance agility reduces administrative burdens, simplifies reporting, and allows you to leverage data for an optimal fleet operation. Collecting and storing your fleet data on an easily accessible platform allows a complete view of your entire fleet’s daily activities.

 

 

Optimising your business fleet operations

 

The fleet industry moves at a rapid pace, making adaptability and efficiency key routes to a successful business. For fleet management and maintenance, this agility comes from centralisation in many ways:

 

 

Understanding your ideal fleet size

 

Fleet managers can use driver behaviour analysis to decide their ideal fleet size by identifying encouraging better fuel management, reducing vehicle wear and tear, and optimising driving routes. This aids in reduces operating costs and optimising maintenance scheduling for a more efficient fleet. This approach improves cost efficiency whilst ensuring that your fleet vehicles are well-maintained and can perform their daily tasks with minimal setbacks.

 

 

Avoiding vehicle downtime

 

Vehicle downtime is a significant cost for fleet managers, harming your financial health and brand reputation simultaneously. By syncing your maintenance and repair systems you can monitor fleet health in ‘near real-time’, allowing you to be proactive in your fleet maintenance to avoid harmful vehicle downtime, potentially save on administrative costs, and allocate resources elsewhere in your business. Telematics data can help your vehicles stay mobile by noticing and alerting potential issues early, allowing for preventive maintenance. 

All Northgate hire options come with service and maintenance included as standard.

 

 

Transitioning to electric vehicles

 

Calculating the lifetime cost of electrification is significant in enhancing fleet agility. By accounting for EV acquisition, maintenance, and charging infrastructure costs, businesses can transition at the optimal time and ensure that their electric vehicle fleet remains agile and cost-effective. Did you know EVs are 59% less prone to breakdowns* than ICE vehicles? This makes them ideal for improving fleet reliability once implemented into your overall fleet.

It’s important to plan ahead for a smooth EV transition that improves your business in the short-term whilst future proofing your operations in a sustainable manner. Driver journey analysis and telematics data for your fleet can feed into an EV suitability analysis report to assess your overall readiness for transition.

 

 

The importance of fleet preventative maintenance

 

Implementing a proactive fleet preventive maintenance strategy is key to ensuring your vehicle reliability, performance, and financial health.

We’ve already mentioned some of the factors that encompass preventive maintenance (monitoring driver behaviour and leveraging telematics data). In addition, regular vehicle inspections help to address any issues that may be increasing wear and tear on vehicles early before they disrupt your operations.

Effective fleet preventative maintenance also requires understanding and control of maintenance costs. By analysing expenses, such as frequent parts replacements (e.g. clutch, tyres, and brakes) businesses can identify and budget for these cost drivers accordingly. It's recommended to monitor the reliability of different vehicles, stay on top of scheduled downtime for services and MOTs, and ensure all compliance needs, like servicing and insurance, are met.

Additionally, tracking incidents and breakdowns can help prevent future issues, reduce fines, and minimise vehicle wear and tear.

 

 

Removing your fleet management load

 

The recurrent hurdles towards fleet management are well-known for businesses who may not have a specialist fleet manager provision in-house:

1. A lack of time.
2. A lack of money.
3. A lack of specialist expertise.

Northgate’s fleet management solutions bridge the gap and provides a large fleet solution to fleets of all sizes, helping you reduce cost, improve driver safety, and free-up time, so you can concentrate on your core business.

 

 

Hassle-free transition to electric

 

Northgate’s Drive to Zero programme offers a complete electrification solution with EVs including service and maintenance as standard, charging infrastructure, and charge cards available. Plus, we have fully trained EV technicians in each of our workshops to keep you on the road.

Unsure if you’re ready for EVs?

Our EV suitability analysis assesses where electric vehicles can realistically be integrated into your fleet both now, and in the future, with tailored solutions for your specific business fleet needs. Electrifying your fleet begins with identifying whether you operate any vehicles with suitable electric vehicle alternatives due to various qualifiers such as, daily mileage, journey profiles, and potential CO2 savings.