The Unexpected Benefits of Driving Hour Management and Driver Fatigue

As you know, there are regulations that govern the driving hours of drivers of commercial goods vehicles and passenger carrying vehicles. These regulations go by different names depending on where your fleet operates but their goal is ultimately the same and that is to reduce driver fatigue and the accidents related to it.

Now, the majority of fleets will monitor and manage driving hours to ensure that they remain compliant with the above regulations and, of course, reduce fatigue. This is the main reason why you should do it but did you know that you can extract additional value from fatigue management for driving hours aside from the obvious?

How Your Fleet Benefits from a Time Management Solution

You can reduce overtime costs by up to 15% (according to consulting and research firm Frost & Sullivan) if you employ a fleet management solution to track driving hours. Not only is it an accurate way to keep track of hours (potential human error is eliminated) but you can also allocate resources according to data to avoid the need for overtime in the first place.

Overtime Woes

If a driver logs an overtime claim, it can be checked against the electronically-captured driving hours and the driver’s location at the time of the claim. This prevents false claims from being logged.

Customer Billing

If you bill customers hourly or by the minute, you need to provide accurate billing. Fair billing that is based on solid data, helps keep customers satisfied and builds a trusting relationship with them.

Having a telematics solution that electronically keeps track of driving hours for fatigue management can help you see exactly how long a driver was with a customer. Relying on the recall of drivers can lead to errors so automated is inevitably better.

Electronic logging saves time and can even help you get your money faster. Additionally, should you customer have a question about their bill, you can give them an accurate breakdown of the costs which results in fewer disputes.

Payroll

Timesheet fraud can occur when drivers record more hours than they’ve worked, driving time is edited retrospectively to cover a deficiency or regular time is logged as overtime because it pays more.

Not only does this result in drivers getting more pay than they’re entitled to (resulting in raised costs for you) but it can also cause inaccurate billing. To avoid this, you need to switch to automated processes. In companies where drivers are left to their own devices because of manual time logging, timesheet fraud is usually prevalent and difficult to eliminate.

Vehicle Utilization Optimization

Knowing your vehicle utilization rate (how frequently a vehicle is used within a given time period) can help you increase your fleet’s overall efficiency. A telematics solution that electronically tracks driving hours for fatigue management can tell you vehicle arrival and departure times, stop duration, driving time between different jobs and amount of time a vehicle is inactive during the day.

Why Manage Driving Hours for Your Fleet

Using the above data you can determine whether jobs are being completed within a reasonable amount of time, where there are delays at job sites, where unnecessary detours are being taken (for personal errands, for example) and whether certain vehicles are not being used as much as they should be.