The fleet manager’s responsibility is to ensure that fleet vehicles are well-maintained and ready to use and that the company’s drivers are driving safely and in compliance with government guidelines such as hours of service requirements.
Fleet managers have many responsibilities and likely have numerous titles and duties. They collaborate with vital employees from different departments, and their duties and titles can fluctuate depending on the industry, vehicle types and size of the company. Learn more about the definition of fleet management here.
A fleet manager is an individual who is responsible for a company’s group of vehicles, which includes all aspects from hiring to maintaining fleet performance.
Fleet managers are in charge of fleet operations for fleet companies, helping the business to run efficiently, safely, and in compliance with the laws and regulations. They create policies based on company requirements to address vehicle usage and driver management and may also set driver schedules. In addition, fleet managers are responsible for directing and managing the costs of commercial vehicles owned or leased by their company.
Fleet managers are integral to keeping a positive bottom line because they manage one of the business’s most important cost centers. Vehicle acquisition, vehicle maintenance costs, fuel efficiency, insurance, driver safety and ensuring vehicles comply with government regulations are among the fleet manager’s duties.
A fleet manager has several responsibilities within a business, depending on the type of business, the business size, and the industry. Fleet managers coordinate with other areas of the company, for example, HR, legal, customer service, safety managers and accounting.
Advanced fleet management software like GPS tracking, built-in reports, proactive notifications, automated rules, and the ability to connect to other systems via API to track vehicles has helped streamline the fleet manager’s role in recent years.
Fleet managers take on many responsibilities and experience a great deal of pressure to succeed. To be effective, they must have strong people skills, an understanding of the industry, and the ability to stay calm under pressure. While they don’t need to know how to do every repair, they should understand what each repair entails in terms of cost and downtime. This way, they can minimize negative impacts on the business and reduce operational costs.
When vehicles or workers are unavailable, a skilled fleet manager can quickly adapt, assess the potential downtime, and promptly rearrange or reassign jobs while also minimizing disruption to vehicle operations.
As technologies and vehicle types evolve, fleet manager skill sets are also evolving and becoming more demanding. There is now a greater need for knowledge of technology and data uses, analytics, and strategic forecasting. The successful fleet manager of the future will also need to:
Furthermore, one must take into account how legislation will alter fleet operations. Legislation may start to encompass taxes or penalties related to carbon footprint or fuel consumption, which would then have a bearing on the types of vehicles being purchased to meet new fuel consumption standards.
Trackunit Manager gives you a broad overview of all your assets, so you can always be on top of your fleet. With groups, you can effortlessly keep track of your machines’ locations and activities. And with tracking, you can closely monitor the location of every machine in your fleet at any given moment.
It is now easier than ever to ensure proper safety protocols are being followed with our innovative and user-friendly checklist builder. You can create checklists for your fleet that can be accessed and completed using your smartphone.
Trackunit Go allows you to monitor all your assets and schedule services. You can view active alarms, equipment uptime both on-site and off-site, and the intuitive map clusters show you which assets are working, moving, or stopped. Furthermore, you can see the distance to nearby equipment based on the user’s location and get turn-by-turn navigation directions.
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