Cut Your Business Fleet Costs.

5 years ago
Categories: Business, Money, Opinion, Weekly Columns

(ThySistas.com) Running a fleet of vehicles is notoriously expensive. But for many businesses, there doesn’t seem to be an alternative: you either accept the costs or go out of business. The majority of owners do the former.

As it turns out, however, there are a variety of ways that you can cut fleet costs and get your budget under control. Here’s how.

Encourage Workers To Drive Efficiently

The way your employees drive can have a substantial impact on your annual fuel and maintenance costs. Over time, revving, sudden braking and rapid acceleration can increase your expenses. Your job, as the owner, is to train your drivers to drive in a way that cuts costs and helps them earn bigger bonuses.

Slow down. Driving fast is the best way to increase fuel consumption and risk of accidents, pushing up insurance premiums. Train drivers to slow down and treat their vans with caution so that they save the business money.
Use air conditioning less. Air conditioning uses fuel, so it’s best to use it only when necessary. Sometimes workers need air conditioning in stationary traffic, but opening a window is often more efficient at mid-range speeds, between 30 and 40 mph.
Empty the back. Carrying around extra weight means that your vans have to use more energy when accelerating. Take stuff you don’t need out of the back of the vehicle.
Stop revving. Finally, you’ll want to train drivers to stop revving and use gears that put their vehicles in a lower rev range. Reducing the revolutions per minute wastes less energy and makes the vehicle more efficient.

Hire On-Demand

For some businesses, there’s no need to maintain a permanent fleet of vehicles. Often van hire is much more cost-effective. By hiring, you avoid all of the ongoing insurance and maintenance costs and just pay for the vehicle services that you use.

Choose Low CO2 Vehicles

We’re still waiting for a compelling electric van, but by choosing low CO2 vehicles, you could save a lot of money. Not only do eco-friendly vans tend to be cheaper to buy (because of their smaller engines), but they also attract less tax and use less fuel. If you do a lot of miles in your vans, you could find that you enjoy substantial savings by the end of the year.

Buy Vehicles In Bulk

Many vendors are willing to offer money off van purchases if you buy in bulk (and buy models that they want to shift out of their inventory). Ask the dealer what discounts they offer for multiple vehicle purchases and see if you can save any money.

Don’t Just Pick The Cheapest Sticker Price

While the sticker price is important, it’s not the only cost to take into consideration when buying fleet vehicles. Sticker prices don’t tell you the present discounted cost of running a van across its twenty-year lifetime.

If you want to find out how much it really costs to run a particular model, you’ll have to do some research. Take into consideration things like fuel costs, ongoing maintenance costs and tax.

Staff Writer; Paula Jones