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Fleet Metrics to Track in 2020

Welcome to 2020! We hope you had a wonderful holiday season and are ready to achieve the goals you set for your fleet this year.

One way to make sure you’re on track during the year is by keeping tabs on your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and the right metrics. The three most important areas of fleet metrics include safety, efficiency, and compliance.

As a fleet manager, you have a wide array of data available 24/7 but identifying the right data sets is what will set you up for success the rest of the year. In this post, we’ll cover the top fleet KPIs and metrics you should be measuring to ensure you reach your 2020 goals.

Fuel metrics

Most of the fleet managers we talk to mention how important lowering fuel costs or improving a vehicle’s fuel efficiency is to their operations. In terms of fuel metrics, fleet managers should be tracking:

  • Cost per mile
  • Miles per gallon
  • Fuel economy per vehicle
  • Idling time
  • Unassigned mileage per vehicle
  • While you have no control over what you pay at the pump there are ways to optimize your fleet vehicles to consume fuel more efficiently or get you more miles to the gallon.


Vehicle metrics

Your vehicles can be a large line item on your fleet’s budget and having a clear picture of what your vehicles cost, what their value is, and how your fleet is utilizing them is very important. When it comes to vehicle metrics, track:

  • Asset utilization and hours of use or miles per day
  • Vehicle replacement costs
  • TCO
  • Driver-vehicle assignment

Maintenance metrics

Preventative maintenance is one of the easiest ways to extend the life of your fleet vehicles and keep productivity at its peak. Common maintenance metrics you should watch include:

  • Number of preventative maintenance tasks performed and on schedule
  • Repair rate
  • Technician productivity
  • Parts and inventory
  • Downtime
  • Diagnostic Trouble Codes (DTC) to identify common issues and the vehicles with the most occurrences of a DTC
  • Tow rate

Driver behavior metrics

Driver behavior metrics play a huge role in your fleet’s overall safety performance. Common driver behavior metrics you’ll want to track – and fortunately many driver scorecards group all this data together already – include:

  • Speeding incidents
  • Accidents
  • Harsh braking and acceleration
  • Time on site
  • Excessive idling
  • You should also be looking at your driver tenure and turnover as turnover can burn through your budget quickly.

HOS

With the ELD Mandate in full effect, fleet managers need to pay close attention to HOS and HOS violations and keep track of all driving time.

  • Available Hours of Service (HOS)
  • HOS violations

Accidents

No matter how many policies, procedures, technology or driver training you have in place, accidents will still happen as they’re unpredictable. But staying on top of your fleet’s accidents and any trends can help you improve driver training or identify technology, like dash cams, that may lessen the frequency of them.

  • Number of accidents (many use the accidents-per-million-miles)
  • Total cost per accident
  • Repairs
  • Downtime and rentals
  • Property damage
  • Personal injury
  • Liability costs
  • Legal fees

Technology and tools

Adopting fleet technology and tools, like telematics, into your operations provides greater visibility into many of these fleet metrics, but you might also want to keep tabs on the value these tools bring to your fleet and your employees. Track your:

  • Fleet Management Software costs
  • Driver training and certification ROI
  • Industry events

All of these metrics can help you identify areas of your fleet that need to be addressed, such as speedy drivers, excessive idling, or higher than average fuel consumption on certain vehicles or vehicles with a lot of DTCs popping up, even after regular servicing.

Use your technology to your advantage by creating daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly reports that show how your fleet is doing in these areas and to get a quick snapshot of your fleet’s safety, productivity, and efficiency. In these reports, you can identify positive and negative trends and pinpoint what the problem is to be able to correct it right away.

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