Beating Driver Fatigue on Long Hauls
If you’re a manager of a transport and logistics business in Australia, you’ve likely had a wild ride in 2022. Supply chain issues, worker and driver shortages, major weather events, and the halving of the fuel excise have put pressure on when budgets are already spread too thin.
Thankfully, things are looking up as the year comes to a close, with the return of the full fuel excise and fuel tax credits (FTC) – but ensuring fleet compliance while managing the day-to-day of the business is a constant challenge regardless of what else is happening in the world. The new year is a chance to start fresh and approach the way you run your business differently, and fleet management technology can help.
However, when you just want a simple system that works for your business and its needs, having to choose between the overwhelming number of software and solution options might stop you in your tracks. The answer? A proper all-in-one, connected, customisable solution through telematics.
Here’s how fleet management technology helped one business stay compliant and free up time and how it can do the same for yours.
Meet industry compliance
As a fleet manager, ensuring compliance is essential to maintain worker safety, avoid legal issues, and promote business longevity. Yet, it’s hard for businesses to stay on top of compliance at the best of times, let alone when most workers are operating remotely, out on the road in different locations. A holistic fleet management solution can solve this problem by providing you with fleet visibility while digitising and automating compliance processes.
This was the case for Evans Petroleum; having adopted fleet management technology, the team saw immediate improvements in driver fatigue management. The business is an authorised reseller of BP and Castrol fuel and lubricants, servicing across Gippsland, Victoria. Management found that maintaining fatigue-related compliance using their previous tracking system along with paper-based logbooks to record driver breaks was not comprehensive; it required a lot of oversight to ensure drivers were taking their regulation breaks.
Once they switched to accurate GPS second-by-second tracking and data and electronic work diaries (EWDs), management had the visibility and information to prove compliance at their fingertips – all in one place.
Additionally, it benefits drivers by empowering them to self-manage fatigue. They can stop at the best possible time for their rest breaks as defined within the fatigue rule sets.
Streamline administrative tasks
Keeping track of your drivers and staff, vehicle maintenance, finances, and everything else that is part-and-parcel with running a transport business involves administration time. While it’s impossible to remove admin tasks completely, fleet management technology can streamline tasks and reduce the load, saving staff time across the board.
Evans Petroleum experienced this firsthand. The administrative work from the driver logbook system was becoming an issue for staff; given the remote nature of the work, drivers often wouldn’t return to the main depot for days or longer, so chasing up the logbook required excessive administration time. On top of this, vehicle maintenance was difficult to track, and claiming FTCs was time-consuming, with the business often claiming less than they were entitled to claim.
With the combination of fleet management software and telematics, administrative tasks are now streamlined for Evans Petroleum, and guesswork has been eliminated from important aspects of the business, reducing the chance of error.
Administration staff no longer need to wait for driver logbooks to be returned, and it has drastically reduced the administrative load by eliminating manual paperwork. The maintenance software allows dispatch staff to check when trucks are due for a service; they can see the entire vehicle maintenance history per vehicle from the same system rather than tracking down the correct paperwork.
With FTC Manager, which uses the second-by-second GPS data from Evans Petroleum vehicles to accurately calculate on and off-road travel, the business can maximise its Fuel Tax Credit claims while taking the burden off administration.
Warren Evans, General Manager of Evans Petroleum, reports, “It’s been invaluable because previously, we weren’t claiming FTC to the full extent. Now, we can supply the data straight up. There’s no guesswork, and we get the maximum refund we’re entitled to.”
A customisable solution to support your business
While all of these applications are beneficial on their own, the fact that they are available in a single fleet management system is the key win for managers; you’re busy, and in 2023, the goal is to make life easier, not harder.
Evans sums up Teletrac Navman’s fleet management technology as “a great all-in-one system to meet industry compliance and standards. You can bundle all sorts of bits and pieces in to meet all your business needs.”
Given the complexity of running a transport business – combined with the added pressure of events out of your control – having a customisable, all-in-one fleet management solution can make a world of difference. Rather than chasing your tail all day, you can free up drivers’ time, administration’s time, and your time, allowing the whole team to focus on delivering exceptional service and achieving goals.