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As a fleet manager, you have a wealth of data at your fingertips regarding your drivers and assets. How you leverage that data ultimately determines the success of your fleet, but determining which data to track closely can be challenging. To help you prioritize, we've compiled fifteen of the most important fleet metrics you should be tracking.
If you're just getting started with fleet data, consider using a comprehensive fleet management solution like FleetRabbit to help you keep tabs on key fleet metrics.
Preventive maintenance (PM) is one of the best ways to extend the lifespan of your assets, save on costly repairs, and maximize your uptime. Whether you perform maintenance in-house or outsource to a third party, monitoring the time vehicles spend in the shop ensures repairs are being completed on time.
Implementing a PM schedule and tracking completion rates allows you to analyze all routine maintenance. With fleet maintenance software like FleetRabbit, you can keep track of each open work order and service task so you not only know what's being done but also what's in progress and where it's at in the process to ensure timely completion.
How to track PM On-Time Completion Rate:
Track your PM schedules closely and record when vehicles enter and exit the shop. The length of time it takes to complete service will likely vary based on your technician or shop's workload, but the most important measure is whether you got your vehicle in the shop in a timely manner relative to its PM schedule.
Preventing downtime should always be front of mind for fleet managers, so when vehicles are parked in the shop for a number of days, you're rightly concerned. It's important to track not only how long vehicles are in the shop but also the active time your technicians require to handle the repair.
Technician productivity is crucial to getting vehicles back on the road and managing expenses. You can use time logs as an indicator of what work is being done and determine if vehicles are sitting idle for too long. If you manage your own in-house maintenance team, it can also indicate whether you should consider looping in a third-party provider to assist with labor that your team is struggling to accommodate.
How to track Time to Repair:
Timestamp when vehicles enter the shop and track timesheets from technicians. In fleet management software, you can view vehicle service reports to monitor start and completion dates and see status updates on maintenance to ensure the productivity of the maintenance team.
When thinking about repair costs, it's important to understand the impact that unexpected asset downtime can have on your budget. It's okay when unscheduled service pops up, but you'll want to measure it against your planned services to ensure your PM timelines are actually benefiting your vehicles.
Tracking work orders and maintenance through fleet management software ensures you remain aware of how long vehicles are in the shop and what work is being completed. If you use a third party for maintenance, leveraging maintenance shop automations allows you to quickly approve or reject any service tasks, helping you control costs and manage productivity.
How to track Scheduled vs. Unscheduled Service:
The best way to track any and all maintenance is through well-maintained service records. You can utilize a labeling or coding system that allows you to track whether a certain service was planned or unplanned, and you can also measure against your set PM timelines.
Driver Vehicle Inspection Reports (DVIR) keep fleets compliant and alert managers of vehicle issues, but they are also key to understanding the health of your assets. Leveraging DVIR data and analyzing it across user or vehicle groups can provide important insights into your assets' health.
But to use that data, you have to make sure that it's consistently completed. Tracking your inspection completion rate can help you ensure that drivers are staying on top of inspections and that you're collecting vital data touchpoints on each asset.
How to track Inspection Completion Rate:
Have a way to collect daily vehicle inspection reports, whether it's a physical form or digital entry, and keep a running percentage of inspections completed that can be related to either individual assets or drivers.
It's not enough to just complete inspections – you have to pay attention to the results to understand the overall effect of your maintenance plans and utilization. Understanding the relationship between your fleet operations and your inspection pass/fail rate can quickly reveal areas for improvement.
When vehicles continually pass inspections but end up in the shop, it could point to an under-thorough inspection process. On the other hand, a vehicle that is constantly failing inspections could indicate a vehicle that has outlived its usefulness in your fleet.
How to track Inspection Pass/Fail Rate:
Keep a ratio for each individual asset on their inspections versus fails, and as that ratio increases, consider new maintenance measures or replacement.
In relation to scheduled and unscheduled maintenance, the downtime and uptime on each of your vehicles is essentially the consequence of maintenance, and tracking it can help you determine whether you're still getting a positive ROI on your assets. If a vehicle is spending more time in the shop than out on the road, it could indicate that it may be time to replace it.
How to track Downtime vs. Uptime:
Record every time a vehicle goes down, whether it's in the shop or just out of service, and keep a running total that you gauge against your operations' total potential working hours.
Your odometer is the key to unlocking tons of fleet insight, from preventive maintenance scheduling to determining vehicle replacement. Tracking odometer readings ensures you stay prepared and proactive for maintenance milestones and replacement timelines.
As most PM tasks are based on mileage and hour intervals, receiving regular odometer updates allows you to keep your vehicles in top condition. You can also use odometer readings to manage drivers and lower fuel costs.
How to track Mileage/Hours:
Integrating a telematics device that will automatically update numbers in your fleet management software is the easiest way to track mileage, but you can also include it as a required field in your inspections. Utilizing telematics data eliminates the risk of manual errors in odometer reporting and provides complete visibility into your fleet.
Fuel is one of the largest ongoing fleet expenses, so it's crucial to closely track usage and spend. Having a system to monitor and calculate fuel costs and consumption in real-time can significantly benefit your fuel management process.
This process can be easily handled via fleet management software and telematics integrations, but having a way to gauge fuel consumption regardless of your solution is important to ensuring your vehicles are running properly and maximizing ROI with their fuel expenditure.
How to track Fuel Consumption and MPG:
A fuel management system helps you know the ins and outs of your fuel economy by automatically determining cost-per-mile to forecast future expenses. Viewing costs in real-time helps optimize financial allocation. To further streamline the fuel management process, consider integrating fuel cards with fleet management software to automatically download fuel transactions and avoid invalid readings.
Investing in a fleet isn't cheap, so getting the most out of your assets is essential. Monitoring your fleet assets will help increase your ROI and maximize their lifespan. Tracking average hours of use or miles per day not only keeps you on time with preventive maintenance scheduling; it also helps you maintain a sustainable fleet size.
After monitoring asset utilization for several months, you may discover under-utilized vehicles in your fleet that can be better used or sold for a profit. Alternatively, you may discover your current fleet size can't meet demand. Proper asset utilization levels vary, but finding your fleet's sweet spot can help you avoid costly expenses or unplanned downtime.
How to track Utilization Rate:
Utilization rate is similar to uptime in that it reflects how often an asset is in use. You'll want to track it in either mileage or time, whichever is more useful to you.
Without a doubt, vehicle replacement can be one of a fleet manager's most daunting tasks, but if approached strategically, replacing your assets can be mostly painless. Sometimes, vehicles stay in operation longer than they should, causing asset performance to decline while operating costs rise. Even though replacing assets is expensive, having aging vehicles constantly in and out of the shop will negatively affect your bottom line.
How to track Vehicle Operational Life:
Tracking fleet metrics like odometer readings, service history, and TCO can help decide whether a vehicle should be replaced. Leveraging fleet management software ensures you make the right decisions at the right time.
Perhaps the most important and comprehensive metric you should be tracking is your fleet's true total cost of ownership. This is one of the most challenging aspects to track and manage, but knowing your fleet's TCO allows you to confidently make data-driven decisions about your business. Getting a breakdown of your fleet expenses gives you an understanding of your return on investment (ROI). It also helps determine strategies for preventive maintenance, vehicle replacement, and whether to purchase or lease future vehicles.
How to track Total Cost of Ownership:
You'll need to know the capital, maintenance, asset depreciation, licensing, and vehicle administration costs on every asset in your fleet to calculate TCO. Once you have this data, fleet management software like FleetRabbit can calculate TCO from an aggregate of your fleet's data.
Cost per mile (CPM) is a metric that calculates the costs associated with operating a vehicle or a fleet of vehicles over a specific distance, typically to the degree of a single mile. Fleet managers rely on CPM as a performance indicator to monitor and manage the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of their fleet operations – if cost per mile increases, then an asset might no longer be as efficient as it should be or may not be providing the same value to the fleet as it was before.
CPM data provides valuable insights for budgeting and financial forecasting, allowing for more effective resource allocation. When fleet managers understand CPM, they can pinpoint areas of vehicle performance that need improvement and make data-driven decisions about the composition of their fleet.
How to track Cost per Mile:
CPM is a fairly easy metric to track if fleet managers have effectively recorded vehicle costs and mileage. To calculate CPM, the total expenses for each asset are divided by the total distance covered using the formula: CPM = Total Expenses / Total Miles. Many fleets calculate their CPM over the course of a year and compare to previous years, but you can choose a time period that works best for your vehicle retirement cycle.
If you're managing maintenance in-house, you need to have the right tools on hand to minimize vehicle downtime. Tracking your parts inventory helps avoid stockouts and reduces unnecessary inventory costs.
Because parts make up over one-third of vehicle maintenance costs, controlling inventory levels is crucial to your fleet management system. Keeping track of part quantities in an online parts database provides insight into part usage.
Regularly viewing part order history and tracking inventory values helps you make actionable decisions on future spending and efficiently manage inventory storage.
How to track Parts and Inventory Costs:
Software that has parts inventory tracking is the easiest way to control your costs and avoid shortages. The right platform will allow you to utilize RFID and barcode scanning to manage your in-house stock.
Telematics data provides valuable fleet visibility and insight into asset health. We've mentioned telematics data in relation to other metrics like mileage and cost per mile, so it's inherent that integrating your telematics device into fleet management software can increase the value of your data across the board.
While tracking meter readings can help improve PM, telematics data helps you proactively monitor driver behavior and identify unsafe practices that can harm the driver and vehicle.
How to track Telematics Data:
This metric is fairly simple to track – use your installed telematics devices to keep track of the frequency of diagnostic trouble codes (DTC) or engine fault alerts to quickly manage maintenance and observe trends across your fleet. If you want to go the extra mile, integrate your telematics data into a fleet management platform like FleetRabbit for more robust visibility.
While fleet managers focus heavily on their assets, it's also important to track and manage your drivers. A driver management system ensures the safety and productivity of your drivers and gives you peace of mind that your assets are in safe hands.
Fleet management software provides several ways and integrations to track drivers and their behavior. Assigning vehicles to drivers allows you to quickly view the duration and distance of assignments and keep your drivers accountable. Integrating other systems like telematics and fuel cards into a fleet tracking app allows you to further track driver productivity by getting a comprehensive view of their location, habits, and spending.
The right metrics can make or break your fleet's performance. That's why FleetRabbit makes it easy to monitor, analyze, and act—before inefficiencies cost you big. With proper tracking of these 15 essential fleet metrics, you'll be well on your way to optimizing your fleet operations and maximizing your ROI.
