The Benefits of Fleet Time Tracking

Keeping track of how much time your fleet is spending on the road can yield a lot of benefits to you and your organization over time. Much like aircraft are monitored for the number of hours their engines are running, fleet vehicle time tracking can be used for everything from vehicle safety to vehicle maintenance.

We’ve always wanted to track certain types of information within our fleets. Things like fuel economy, maintenance costs, distances traveled, tire tread wear, and other key metrics have all been a part of any standard set of data collected about a fleet of vehicles.

However, understanding how that data fits into the overall picture of your fleet is where time tracking comes in. Collecting all of that other data is great but if you don’t have a scale to measure it against, then the data can actually be kind of meaningless.

Fleet time tracking allows you to use the number of hours the vehicle is actually on the road and in use as the scale against which everything else is measured. This can be helpful when judging any number of fleet metrics.

For example, a vehicle may have been checked out for half of a day but the vehicle was returned with only 32 additional miles on the odometer. What was the vehicle used for during that time? On the other hand, a vehicle that covered a large amount of distance in a relatively short amount of time was likely being driven at unsafe speeds. Recognizing times that don’t add up with the given odometer readings can be key in recognizing safety concerns within your fleet.

Fleet time tracking can also have maintenance benefits as well, particularly in low-mileage fleets. Engine fluids that need to be changed out after a number of months or miles may not reach the mileage threshold in the given time. Still, because of chemical breakdowns and other processes, that fluid should still be changed. Tracking fleet vehicle time is instrumental in making sure that those maintenance benchmarks are being met.

It is, of course, as important as ever to make sure that all vehicle metrics are being tracked in order to ensure proper maintenance intervals and that vehicles are being utilized for their intended uses. Keeping a watchful eye over maintenance intervals, fuel fill-ups, tire changes, and other routine occurrences will keep your fleet running strong for years. However, tracking the time that those vehicles are on the road is becoming a more and more critical part of ensuring that you, as the fleet manager, are getting the whole picture on your fleet operations.