The Benefits Of Having A Set Reporting Structure For Your Fleet By Elizabeth Murphy At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

Having everyone on the same page is very important when managing your fleet. Each process should have a set procedure that everyone should follow and know well. By following these procedures and letting everyone know about them, such things as creating reports, communication, reporting events, and other activities, will be understood by all employees. When there is no set reporting structure to communicate important information, everything is chaotic. A company cannot be productive if they don’t communicate.

Let’s see our first example: X company has no fleet management protocol in place and when one of the vehicles breaks down, there is no radio in the truck for the driver to tell headquarters that he is in big trouble. He cannot tell then their delivery is going to be late and the truck is broken down because he has no means of communication. The driver is stuck in the middle of nowhere and has to take off on foot to find a business or residence to make a long distance call. In this scenario, is the driver has no way to report his problem to his superior. So, the customer expecting the delivery is going to be very upset. Consequently, once the driver contacts his employer, another truck will have to be sent out to retrieve the driver and arrangements will have to be made to tow the truck.

If there had been a fleet management system in place, the truck would have been properly maintained because of accurate maintenance records. Furthermore, if that truck not been maintained for a while, the fleet management system’s reports would be able to see maintenance was past due and made arrangements for maintenance and this would have prevented the breakdown. A better communication method would have been put in place so that the driver could communicate to his operations manager that there was a problem. This would saved a lot of time and the driver could still have made the delivery to the customer on time.

In the meantime, fleet management is preparing reports regarding the incident and will continue to create reports regarding the status of the vehicle so that others within the company can accurately receive this information, be aware of the problem and understand it. Such reports make it easy to know when a vehicle must be replaced and when a vehicle must be maintained. Reports are also made available to the drivers in regards to what routes to take when reaching their destination. It is important to have such a reporting structure in place and to make sure the driver understands this information and also understands how to report various things to fleet management.

Communication

Having a set reporting structure is important for communicating a lot of information effectively. Verbal communication is also important and it is important that all communication from the driver regarding the job be documented. Having fleet management operations in place to take care of this is very important so that if any questions are brought up regarding a certain delivery or an incident that happened on a particular day, fleet management has the details the driver relayed to them. That is why it is important to have a communication device such as a radio available to truck drivers in case there is a problem or if valuable information needs to be relayed back to home base. A business certainly cannot operate properly without proper communication and a set reporting structure to aid in that communication.

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