As a fleet manager, one of your primary responsibilities is to ensure that your fleet operates efficiently and cost-effectively. However, achieving this goal can be challenging, especially when dealing with a fleet that is either too large or too small for your organization's needs.
This is where fleet rightsizing comes into play. Fleet rightsizing is the process of optimizing the size and composition of your fleet to meet your organization's operational requirements while minimizing costs and maximizing efficiency. In other words, it's about finding the perfect balance between having enough vehicles to meet demand without having excess capacity that goes unused.
But why is fleet rightsizing important? In this guide to fleet rightsizing, we'll explore the key principles and strategies behind this essential fleet management practice. Whether you're managing a small fleet of vehicles or a large commercial fleet, this guide will provide you with the knowledge and tools you need to optimize your fleet for success.
The term “rightsizing” is used so frequently – interchangeably and often incorrectly – that fleet professionals may lose track of its true definition amid so much jargon.
As the U.S. Department of Energy states:
“Fleet rightsizing is a management practice that can help vehicle fleet managers build and maintain an ideal vehicle inventory. Fleet inventories often grow over time to include vehicles that are highly specialized, rarely used, or unsuitable for current applications. By evaluating fleet size and composition, managers can optimize vehicle use, conserve fuel, reduce emissions, and save money on fuel and maintenance.”
Your fleet carries the right quantity of vehicles, i.e., not too many and not too few. You have enough vehicles to satisfy the requirements of your organization’s mission and the vehicles are easily available to your drivers as needed.
Conversely, you do not have more vehicles than you actually require, which would create waste and areas of financial loss from unnecessary carrying costs derived from too much underused equipment.
Your most-needed vehicle classes are available where they are required, affordably accessible at the location where the work or the drivers are located. Seldom-used classes of vehicles (or vehicle types) are accessible at an easily traveled distance away, and are not needed at each fleet location, therefore it is unnecessary that every location has that vehicle type at the ready “just in case.”
Having the right vehicle type/class for the work is crucial. A component of right-sizing is choosing the right class of vehicle and upfitting just enough of the vehicles to do the job. If you know the work your organization does, then you can look at your data and know what size and type of vehicle you need.
Obviously, you would not use a large box truck to transport one or two people, but organizations may buy oversized equipment on the pretense of what they “may” need someday, versus what they “will” need every day, creating waste and added costs.
When procuring a new asset, you should ask: Are the engines large enough to perform the recurring tasks but not oversized. Can the task be accomplished with a two-wheel drive vehicle instead of a 4-wheel drive vehicle?
Form follows function. Tap into your fleet management information system’s reporting to develop the clearest picture of what you actually do year-over-year and compose your fleet to serve your needs. You will find considerable reductions as well as savings from doing so.
Do drivers have access to vehicles when they are needed? Are vehicles available after hours or on weekends? If access to fleet vehicles requires access to a motor pool office or an outside rental office that is closed, needs go unfulfilled. Your drivers need access to vehicles at the time the job needs to be done.
The knee-jerk reaction to this aspect regularly is “we need more vehicles,” but that’s not true. You need more flexible availability. Systems like Agile Fleet’s key management, in partnership with FleetCommander, gives drivers the ability to make vehicle requests online, retrieve keys through an automated keybox, and have that availability around the clock, all year long, and even on holidays if need be.
That means the vehicles can do more in a day and it will not adversely impact staffing. Through analysis of your fleet’s data, you will find that rather than having three vehicles – one or two of which going unused in the parking lot most of the time – you get the full value from one vehicle without negatively impacting productivity.
Do you want to rightsize your fleet operation? Rightsizing is a continuous initiative focused on ensuring you have the right quantity and the right class of vehicles available at the right locations - at the right time. What do you need to rightsize your fleet? Keep reading to learn more about how to rightsize your fleet.