Work Smarter, Not Harder: Easy Ways to Improve Driver Productivity

Work Smarter, Not Harder: Easy Ways to Improve Driver Productivity

Are you looking for ways to increase driver productivity ? As a fleet manager, it’s essential to measure productivity and profitability, but ensuring your drivers are satisfied is equally as important. Happy drivers are more inclined to do better work, follow all safety and compliance guidelines, and commit to being their very best every day.

If you want to get more out of your drivers and keep them satisfied, many methods will increase your driver productivity in order to achieve your business goals. In this article, we’ll provide driver productivity methods designed to work in tandem with your truck fleet management responsibilities.

Invest in a Transportation Management System (TMS)

Every fleet owner should use a TMS system to have in-depth insights into day-to-day transportation operations, including access to data such as on-time deliveries. TMS is a logistics platform that helps fleet owners plan, execute, and manage each delivery to ensure it follows all rules and regulations.

TMS technology has a greater impact on supply chains and is involved in every step of the process, from planning to procurement to logistics to management. Having a 360-degree understanding of your business and how it operates will be pivotal for how your business implements strategies to improve performance.

When it comes to choosing the right TMS software for your business, there are a number of options, but a few of the top-rated platfornms include MercuryGate TMS, Oracle TMS, and Blue Yonder TMS.

If you are looking to improve driver productivity, a TMS tool is a must-have strategy in your truck fleet management toolbox.

Measure Per-Truck Productivity

Trucking companies are wasting countless dollars by underutilizing their fleets. Trucks that are parked and are not on the road are wasting business revenue. In order to ensure all trucks are being utilized to their fullest potential, trucking companies should have a higher driver per truck ratio so that there’s always someone to drive and put every truck to use.

Slip seating is a powerful way to maximize driver and truck productivity. Airlines and buses use the slip seat method, which ensures that vehicles are always operating 24/7, making the business money at all times of the day. Fleet owners should consider hiring more staff to ensure each vehicle is being utilized at all times of the day. Even if you cannot do this for every truck, even a little change can increase in your organization’s bottom line.

Drive A Positive Organizational Change

One of the best ways to increase driver productivity is to change your organization’s way of communicating. Most people in the fleet’s operations department have an understanding of how much each truck needs to be utilized in order for the business to make a profit. But the drivers don’t have access to the numbers.

Driver goals only achieve half of the big picture because they mostly don’t know the desired end results. Many drivers tend to be cognizant of mileage, gas, breaks, and time on the road, but they don’t have the understanding as to why they should be cautious about those metrics.

Upper management should be more direct and tell drivers the numbers needed for each truck to generate profits and revenue for the business. Incentives such as bonuses or gift cards can be a great way to motivate your drivers to hit their target goals.

Hire the Right People for the Right Job

The worst outcome for your business can be if the wrong people are in the wrong positions. If you have customer service reps that don’t have outstanding customer service skills, they can negatively affect business operations. If you have drivers that don’t understand or follow preventative measures, plan out their routes, or don’t have a performance-driven mindset, your business can suffer.

It’s critical to hire the right people who want to understand the company’s goals and who will enact changes to help your business reach those goals. When one person works hard, it motivates the people around them to do the same. Having a staff that is constantly motivated and pushing each other to be their very best is the essence of positive work culture. When your drivers show up to work and are ready to perform, driver productivity and revenue increase.

Become a Proponent of Technology

Technology such as telematics is being integrated into fleet business operations more and more and is increasing productivity all around. Telematics is designed to save businesses time and money by helping drivers plan better routes that take less time so they can be more efficient in their day-to-day roles. These technologies can help your business run more smoothly with features that can locate the nearest vehicle to the desired location or finding a driver most suited to reach a specific destination, which allows customer service to give more accurate dispatch times. Telematics is the future of the trucking industry, and if your business hasn’t adopted technological change, now is the time to do so.

Want to Learn More About Increasing Driver Productivity?

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