Running a business means striving to find ways to grow your revenues while cutting expenditures. This is no different for the trucking industry. When cutting costs, there are things that can yield significant rewards while other decisions may have unintended consequences. Let’s take a look at how your trucking company can cut costs without sacrificing safety or performance.
Focus on Preventative Maintenance
The most important asset for any trucking company after their drivers is their vehicles. Preventative maintenance is key for keeping your trucks on the road and increasing their performance. Many people may see preventative maintenance as an expense. However, it is one that typically yields a large return on investment. Maintenance decreases the likelihood of major mechanical issues while also helping keep your safety score low.
It is important to have a regular schedule for inspections and preventative maintenance. Using a carrier management system like ZTrucking can help you stay on target with your maintenance program. The software tracks your maintenance schedules and notifies you about upcoming work. It also stores a helpful history for record keeping.
Encourage Driver Safety
It is strongly recommended that trucking companies take a zero tolerance policy towards accidents and injuries. Encouraging driver safety is an excellent way to help take steps to reduce costs. Accidents can be costly in many ways including the initial cost as well as long-term costs such as increased insurance rates or loss of loads.
Promoting safe driving habits is an important part of encouraging driver safety. Accurately tracking driver performance is also imperative. A carrier management system can allow you to track important information such as driver discipline, moving violations, and drug test compliance, helping ensure you can intervene quickly when needed.
Use Quality Fuel
One trap that many trucking companies fall into is turning to lower quality fuel in order to save a quick buck. While this does sound like a lucrative idea, it often costs more in the long run. Cheap fuel does not have the additives that normal fuel has. Additionally, it tends to leave many more deposits throughout the truck’s combustion chambers and valves.
In the short term, this tends to cause reduced engine performance that can hurt fuel consumption. Over the long-term, it leads to premature failures of parts, putting your truck in need of costly repairs while also taking it off the road. The use of quality fuel may cost more for each fill up but saves money over the life of your vehicles.
Invest in a Carrier Management System
Keeping your fleet trucking along requires many moving parts. A carrier management system helps you stay organized and efficient. In addition to streamlining systems and processes, these systems are critical for record keeping. Systems like ZTrucking can improve safety, protecting you from violations and keeping your safety score low.
Of course, the huge financial benefit of a carrier management system is the savings to time and staffing. These all-in-one systems allow you to complete many tasks in a fraction of the time it takes to do them manually. You can shift cost savings and extra time to helping grow your business with state of the art systems like ZTrucking.