Accident Awareness
Traditional driving safety steps, such as education and fatigue avoidance, may create generally more competent drivers, but they do not address the specific factors that lead to accidents. Big Data empowers fleet managers to understand the finer points of accident avoidance and develop a strategy to reduce driving risks. By examining past records from your trucks, you can determine the circumstances under which accidents are common and adjust your drivers' behavior accordingly. Say that you identify a curve on one road where accidents frequently occur, and find that they are especially likely to occur if the truck is traveling above 60 miles per hour. By instructing your drivers to drop to 50 when approaching that curve, you eliminate a common source of damaged inventory, liabilities, and danger to your employees.
Maintenance Motivation
Besides helping your drivers behave more safely on the road, Big Data allows you to avoid safety and service issues related to vehicle maintenance. Hoping to catch signs of damage before they cause serious problems, fleet managers conduct regular vehicle inspections. Big Data allows you to schedule these inspections more precisely. By determining the conditions under which equipment failed in the past, you can account for not only the amount of miles or time it has been since a vehicle was inspected, but also weather, road quality, and other key factors. Big Data also determines which pieces of equipment are likely to create problems, letting maintenance teams focus their energies more effectively.
Reinforced Resourcefulness
All fleet managers strive to find the shortest routes to their destinations, hoping to minimize the time and fuel it takes to complete an order. The shortest route on paper, however, is not always the quickest one in practice given traffic, road work, and weather. Through Big Data Analytics, you can examine the routes your vehicles have taken and determine which ones are the quickest in practice. You can thus complete the same orders more quickly and at a lower cost.
In addition to planning routes, Big Data also helps you identify more efficient driving tactics no matter where your destination is. UPS, for example, analyzed records from past shipments and discovered that its drivers used less fuel and completed their orders faster when they avoided left turns. By identifying such sources of inefficiency, you can make continual improvements in cost-effectiveness and service quality.
Securing Customer Satisfaction
Even if you reach your destination on time and at a low price, your clients won’t be happy if the goods they ordered are damaged. Through Big Data, you can identify correlations between your company’s decisions and customer complaints. You may find, for example, that the more advanced a truck’s wall lining and flooring is, the less likely customers are to complain about damage to their products. You can then update your trucks with the latest protective equipment, thereby improving customers’ image of you and minimizing the chance of product returns.
Legend Fleet Solutions provides flooring, mats, wall lining, and other protective products for your trucks. For more information on promoting efficiency, safety, and product quality throughout your fleet, visit our website today.
