Lift Truck Tips: Taking control of fleet costs, culture and course

For some, “fleet management” means little more than making sure there are enough redundant lift trucks to prevent downtime. Many fleet owners are finding a better way than simply maintaining old and costly backup equipment so the core fleet can be run at a grueling pace.

“The adoption of more proactive fleet management practices will soon reach critical mass, since many are in the habit of maintaining lots of old equipment,” says Pat DeSutter, director of fleet management for Yale Materials Handling. “As equipment ages, the cost of maintenance, and the potential for savings, increases.”

Before the recession, it was common to see lift truck acquisitions considered a maintenance, repair and operation (MRO) cost of doing business, an expense not particularly managed or charted. Having identified the potential for efficiencies, many fleet owners have had difficulty navigating the array of products that fall under the broad category of fleet management solutions. More challenging is the cultural change an effective program requires, with or without an investment in technology.

“It is absolutely possible to begin doing some fleet tracking without dramatically changing the culture or the use of technology,” DeSutter says. “A fleet management program can help build a surgical understanding of fleet costs, create a solid baseline and identify the hurdles in justifying any investment or cultural change.”

With fleet management, there’s no “add water and stir” recipe, DeSutter says. The process of exploration can be daunting for someone looking for hard returns on investment. A good justification should include up-front costs and, more importantly, the ability to project costs based on courses of action.

In most cases, the brunt of responsibility for executing a fleet management program will fall to operations. However, DeSutter suggests it takes three parties in an organization to make the program work. Operations must adhere to ever-improving practices on a day-to-day basis while monitoring costs in a way that is readily available to procurement. In parallel, the financial team should work to understand the ROI model specific to their organization as they assess the cost of the fleet. Some businesses would do well to carve fleet costs out of the MRO placeholders and give them a dedicated place on the expense line, DeSutter says.

With costs in check, the operator culture can begin the transition from “rear-view mirror” to forward-looking. “Historically, training and accountability is more reactive,” DeSutter explains. “You find out after the fact that something happened, and it results in a corrective action. This leads to a disciplinary instead of a constructive atmosphere. With or without technology, better and more relevant data will provide more opportunity to drive a culture based on good driving habits.”