4 Ways to Reduce Operating Costs for Construction Fleets

1. Conduct Inspections Regularly

Inspections are like brushing your teeth: it is a task you need to do to start and end your day, but it is often undervalued and skipped.

Poorly maintained vehicles and equipment also age faster than those properly maintained. A poorly maintained vehicle needs to be replaced at least 50,000 miles before a comparable regularly maintained vehicle.

As the table below shows, common maintenance failures are less expensive to repair when planned rather than after vehicle breakdown.

Utilize mobile electronic reports to make the dreaded daily inspections more bearable. Your employees could save over 60% of their time spent on inspections! You can also customize electronic inspection forms to meet your construction fleet’s specific needs. Keep your workers safe while saving money and staying on top of government safety mandates.

2. Schedule Preventive Maintenance

Since your construction fleet has diverse assets ranging from pickup trucks to heavy-duty equipment, it can be difficult to keep track of varying maintenance schedules. Falling behind on maintenance leads to asset downtime, higher expenses and reduced profit.

Set maintenance reminders to proactively manage your assets. Regularly maintaining your assets is key to preventing unexpected failures and accidents.

Scheduling preventive maintenance reminders will reduce the number of construction asset accidents and failures. As a result, your fleet can reduce asset repair costs, downtime and premature asset replacement.

3. Monitor Fuel Use

The high expense of gasoline and diesel is ever-present for your construction equipment and vehicles. Monitoring fuel costs is the most effective way to identify inefficiencies, theft and potential savings in your fleet. You can drastically reduce fuel expenses by measuring your construction fleet’s fuel use and fuel efficiency.

Managing your assets’ fuel use enables you to identify equipment idle time and improve driving habits. You can reduce your fuel consumption on-site and while traveling between sites by controlling construction asset idle time and establishing driving behavior guidelines such as maximum speeds.

Monitoring fuel theft can also lead to fuel savings. Integrating your construction fleet management software with your on-site fueling system allows you to identify usage outliers and dig in to see if the root cause is preventable.

4. Sell Underutilized Assets

Track your construction fleet inventory to identify vehicles, heavy-duty assets and equipment that are underutilized. If there are assets that are underutilized now or will be in the near future, sell them. There is no need to keep equipment or assets you will not use in the future once your current construction project is complete. By selling, you will reduce maintenance costs and can invest the capital in other areas until you need to purchase new assets.

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