7 Reasons Your Municipality NEEDS a Motor Pool

Getting everyone where they need to be in the most cost-effective way possible comes with a few challenges. Chief among them is cost. The cost of maintaining vehicles for departments and individual employees adds up.

Public fleets — from municipal governments to federal agencies — that centralize their motor pools can tame fleet costs to make them more manageable. Moving from a decentralized vehicle model is an effective strategy to trim costs, streamline operations, increase vehicle utilization, and right-size fleets.

Let’s dive into the seven benefits of centralized vehicle sharing model.

Budget Busting

The Bureau of Transportation Statistics has some interesting things to say about the cost of owning and operating an automobile. First, vehicle ownership costs more than ever.

The bureau found vehicle ownership costs added up to just shy of $10,000 in 2020. Today, the tab is over $12,000 for a vehicle driven around 15,000 miles per year. This figure includes fixed costs of $8,318 and $3,864 in variable costs. This money covers fuel, maintenance, tires, insurance, licenses, registration, taxes, depreciation, and finance.

Now, moving to a motor pool won’t eliminate those expenses completely. But it can right-size your fleet to reduce them. Municipalities that have added a proactive vehicle sharing program can often reduce their fleets by 20% to 40%.

Estimates show that eliminating a single vehicle can save $3,000 to $8,000 annually. Now imagine if you could remove 10 vehicles! That could add up to as much as $80,000 in immediate savings.

Maximized Motor Vehicle Use

It’s no secret—underutilized fleets are costly and inefficient. If you have a 10-vehicle fleet and only half of the vehicles are used regularly, this is a 50% utilization rate. Such underutilization increases maintenance costs for idle vehicles, decreases operational efficiency, and wastes resources like fuel and staff time. Underutilized fleets can also lead to reduced customer satisfaction, longer wait times, and missed business opportunities.

Underutilized vehicles also might not reach the threshold for replacement (typically 100,000 miles) as quickly when used by individuals or single departments. The vehicle could take 10 years versus three or four to reach those thresholds.

Balancing capacity (the maximum work the fleet can handle) and demand (the work that needs to be done) can optimize fleet operations and improve profitability and service quality.

More Maintenance Tracking

With department-owned vehicles, all maintenance needs and costs are handled by the department. The department also must track maintenance. Administrators are often assigned these tasks, even though it's not their primary responsibility.

But with a centralized model, fleet management software monitors and tracks preventative maintenance and repairs to leverage bulk services and contracts and to prevent unplanned downtime. Now the fleet stays up to date on preventative maintenance, which cuts down on costly repairs.

A centralized model also has a central cost center. Now the department using the vehicle is not responsible for all maintenance costs; the fleet's central cost center covers these expenses, and each department pays for actual vehicle use. This presents an opportunity for departments to experience a massive cost savings.

Streamlined Operations

Managing a motor pool demands that an individual or team schedule and coordinate vehicle use, dispatch vehicles, and handle reporting and billing, often in addition to their regular jobs. That team also must create, communicate, and enforce policy for vehicle users, track preventative maintenance schedules, and factor in how that downtime might impact the overall motor pool schedule.

All this takes time. Suppose each vehicle reservation takes a member of your staff 15 minutes, and your team has 1,500 reservations per month. This means your team spends 375 hours per month, or 4,500 hours per year, to manage these reservations — a workload that is equal to two full-time positions.

Motor pools streamline vehicle scheduling by automating scheduling, driver compliance checks, key tracking, and paperwork via online self-service vehicle access, removing the need for administrative oversight.

Sustainable Solutions

Going green gets easier with a motor pool.

Centralized motor pools can reduce the number of vehicles on the road and optimize vehicle use to reduce a municipality’s carbon footprint. Fleet sharing also provides opportunities to use more energy-efficient or electric vehicles (EVs).

Reducing your fleet size by 25 vehicles could save an estimated $25,000 per vehicle. Money that you can now invest in fleet greening initiatives like EVs, sustainable shop equipment, or a LEED-certified facility.

Motor pools also make it possible to regularly replace fleet vehicles with newer, more fuel-efficient models. With decentralized models, vehicles may be 20 years old. These vehicles do not use clean technology and consume more miles per gallon.

Greater Flexibility & Scalability

By analyzing usage data and vehicle performance, public sector leaders can make data-driven decisions to scale the fleet up or down as needed.

For example, a Midwest municipality’s construction inspection department and road construction departments have a greater need for vehicles in the spring, summer, and fall compared to winter. With centralized vehicle management, the motor pool could expand and contract as their vehicle needs change.

A Solution for All Vehicle Types

It’s for bulldozers too! When centralizing motor pools, most people think of standard motor vehicles. However, these systems can benefit fleets of all types, including municipal departments with specialized equipment like backhoes, bulldozers, and riding mowers.

Fleet management software can help scale an organization's entire vehicle inventory. For instance, the data may show that the municipality only requires six backhoes, rather than the current fleet of eight, to meet its needs.

Takeaways

Centralizing your municipality's motor pool isn't just a smart move; it’s a game changer.

Imagine the long-term savings and environmental benefits that come with streamlined operations and smarter fleet management. Whether it's cutting back on underutilized vehicles, ensuring regular maintenance, or transitioning to more eco-friendly options, the rewards are clear.

Centralize your fleet and become better stewards of taxpayer’s money by moving your municipality into a future that’s both efficient and sustainable. Your community will thank you.

To learn more about Agile Fleet and how FleetCommander might be used in your fleet, visit www.agilefleet.com, call (571) 498-7555 or email sales@agilefleet.com