In today’s modern world, vehicle fleets can come in many different shapes and sizes. Technically speaking, both a large, internationally operating trucking company and a small, locally operating delivery company are considered fleets. So, if you fall into either of these categories or anywhere in between you have a fleet to run. Regardless of the size and operating procedures of your fleet, you need a comprehensive fleet management program to keep your fleet running as efficiently as possible.
What is Green Driving?
In fleet management, green driving is a combination of concepts of green vehicles and sustainable transport which means driver/ trucker is one who tries his optimal and economically efficient way to have minimal impact on environment, fleet, & organization while driving his vehicle. Green driving can include a range of functions, such as reduce vehicle carbon foot print, improve vehicle maintenance, improve driver performance, reduce fuel usage, improve fleet safety, reduce transportation cost, minimize the organization risks associated with fleet management and much more.
How Green Driving Works in Fleet Management?
Green Driving has been simplified with fleet management software to manage their fleet efficiently. Green driving not only reduces CO2 and the damage you’re driving causes to the environment, it can save you a good deal of money and reduces the amount of road accidents; you will use less fuel and your vehicle will need less maintenance work. It works by installing a small device to your fleet known as a vehicle tracking device or GPS tracking device that actively records the data like fuel consumption, driver behavior, distance traveled as well as the type of roads used, along with time of use, vehicle maintenance records, speed patterns, and much more. The system will also monitor harsh braking, harsh acceleration, and hash cornering to build up a clear picture of drivers driving style. Vehicle tracking device will send all these data to server and fleet management software will show these data in the dashboard front-end in the form of good data analytics which helps fleet manager to analyze differences in consumption and driving style of vehicle users to gain knowledge on possible optimizations and take right decision at the right time to stay green.
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Benefits of Green Driving Feature in Fleet Management
A. Driver Behavior Monitoring: GPS Vehicle tracking system provides a powerful tool to manage your fleet more efficiently, reduce fleet costs and boost productivity. With rising business costs operating fleets aren’t just about managing vehicles, it’s vital for fleet operators to be able to monitor and evaluate driver behavior. That’s where green driving feature can provide many benefits for your company and its drivers. With green driving tool you will get point by point detailed reports on your vehicles and your driver behavior like, fuel consumption, aggressive acceleration, harsh braking, excessive cornering, virtual speed limiter, virtual RPM limiter and crash detection, etc. You can put policies in place and provide coaching and reinforcement to ensure your drivers drive safely and responsibly to protect themselves and others on the road. Here are 8 ways to improve driver behavior with a modern fleet management system.
B. Fuel Monitoring: The ability of fleet data helps track and monitor fuel waste and related costs, distances and miles traveled, idle time, and driving style, for single vehicles, sub-group or an entire fleet. GPS tracking software provide a full view of this fleet performance data, including the lowest and highest ranking vehicles for each of the metrics, giving managers a handful of productivity, diagnostics and maintenance data. The amount of excessive fuel utilized by a driver can be impacted by harsh driving, idle time and unnecessary stops. Typically drivers who complete eco-friendly training usually see an improvement in MPG of between 10% and 25%. In addition, green driver training courses can dramatically improve fleet safety with the effect of reducing fleet accident rates and the associated costs. Intelligent route planning and speed control techniques learned in the course can generate substantial fuel economy savings for your entire fleet. Small, easy changes in driving behavior such as slowing down, avoiding idling and “jack rabbit starts,” planning routes in advance and using a GPS tracking system with Green driving ability can reduce fuel consumption. Read more about the 5 effective ways of saving fuel.
C. Driver Score Card Reports: Our fleet management software’s green driving feature offers fleet managers to set rate for each driver according to their needs and depending on each driver behavior you can generate reports based on the rate given. Having access to accurate behavioral data such as harsh acceleration, braking, cornering, excessive fuel use, productivity levels and safety patterns, allows companies to determine the good and bad driving behavior depending on driver score card and fleet manager can notice that particular driver to improve his driving skills by providing a proper training to stay efficient, productive and cost-effective.
D. Improve Fleet Maintenance: Fleet maintenance keeps your vehicles operating in a good condition so that they are safe, reliable and can stay on the road longer. Implementing green driving program is an integral part of managing a fleet and helps businesses reduce vehicle wear & tear, operating costs and improve vehicle inspection outcomes, among other benefits. Your vehicles are one of your fleet’s top investments. Monitoring your driver behavior on harsh driving style can avoid unscheduled maintenance and taking proper care of them is integral to managing a productive business. Without a proactive approach to fleet maintenance, you risk compromising your employees’ safety, failing FMCSA inspections and paying for costly emergency repairs and unplanned downtime. That’s why the health of your vehicles is a good overall indicator of the health of your business. Here is a check list for fleet & vehicle maintenance.
E. Green Environment: The environment is becoming more of a concern with increasingly alarming statistics about carbon emissions, the greenhouse effect and so on, being reported in the press all the time. Vehicles are a primary source of greenhouse gas pollution, so it is important for your company’s to make an effort to reduce the carbon footprint. Know more about the benefits of going paperless in fleet management.
With green driving feature fleet manager can monitor their vehicles and drivers on aggressive driving style and excessive fuel consumption, by making simple changes such as route optimization, gentle acceleration and stop vehicle slowly will burn less fuel and it will not emit as much toxic substances into the air as regular vehicles, which helps managers to achieve their goal to reduce fuel consumption and emission of greenhouse gas and other air pollutants. Providing Eco driver training can improve your fleet’s MPG between 10% and 25%. Here are top 5 responsibilities of a fleet manager.
F. Reduce Insurance Cost: Telematics green driving features could be an option for fleet manager to lower their fleet insurance premium. Some people call this as Pay-as-You-Drive insurance, or usage based insurance. Fleet manager can install a telematics device or vehicle tracking device inside their fleet to monitor the driving behavior, like how they drive their vehicle, which place will they park at night, how frequently do they use vehicle on which road condition, are they maintain proper tire pressure, avoid overload, and how many times they got crash detection alerts. The telematics insurance policy is then priced depending on the data and adjust your premium accordingly, more safer driving styles rewarded with lower premiums. Co-operative Insurance offers telematics technology and found that 92% of women and 97% of men have been rewarded with a discount on their insurance for safe and consistent driving. If you don't claim for 12 months the cost of insurance will drop by a 3rd and then continue to fall over the following 5 years. Insurance companies hope this no claims 'bonus' will provide some incentive for fleet managers to drive in a safe and respectable way.
Know more about accident reconstruction with telematics data, and how it improves the vehicle insurance's claim process. Contacts us today to know more about Traxroot fleet management software and how it improves green driving.