How to track fleet utilisation

How and Why Should You Track Your Machines Utilisation?

In industries like civil engineering or industrial works, your assets are commonly the largest capital expenditure. Those machines aren’t just tools; they're significant investments.

And while we all prioritise getting the job done, it's essential to understand if our major assets are performing as they should.

Here are some of the big questions the team at Nomadfleet has heard from fleet owners:

• Which machines are pulling their weight and which are causing a dent in the budget?
• Is renting this particular equipment a smarter choice, or should I consider buying it?
• Is this machine providing enough value for its cost and space? When should a machine be sold, fully rebuild, kept for parts or replaced?

You can dive deep into the total cost of ownership and get swamped in the data, but a solid starting point is understanding how much you're using each piece of gear. Tracking utilisation can offer insights into pricing, profitability, and potential asset strategy.

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How to Collect Your Fleet Utilisation Information?

Keeping tabs on your equipment utilisation is easy if you have the right digital system in place. You are 80% of the way there. If you are still using excel spreadsheets and paper machine pre-starts, then the task can be more time consuming. The two key ways to collect your fleet utilisation are:

• Daily Machine Pre-Start Inspections: Completing daily machine pre-starts capturing the machines engine hours is an accurate way to do this.
• GPS Systems: These devices offer real-time data on mileage and usage hours, giving you accurate and updated info.

Once you are collecting the information consistently from one of the above sources, it is time to analyse the data and rank the machines by % utilisation. This can be monthly, quarterly or yearly, depending on your requirements and the level of accurate information.

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How to Analyse the Information?

The last step can be complicated without a tool to visualise the data. Nomadfleet is here to simplify things for you. We provide the means to collect the data via digital pre-starts and also visual the data in a simple format. A modern fleet management system like Nomadfleet can also API the data from your telematics system or OEM provider, enabling more accurate real time data.  

Once you have your data displayed in our easy to understand graph, fleet owners are empowered and can dive deeper to start asking the right questions. With Nomadfleet's easy to use dashboards you can at a glance see:

• What are my best 10 performing assets by category and what are my worst 10?
• From my worst 10, why are they performing bad? Is there work coming up for them?
• Should we dive deeper and investigate if the machine is making or losing us money?

The results can be eye opening with fleet owners realising their hundreds of thousand dollar investment is actually losing you money. On the flip side, it could bring to light the best performing category of asset and identify what the next strategic value adding purchase can be.

Interested in learning how a Fleet Management System like Nomadfleet can assist you in providing utilisation information and insights in a simple way? Reach out for a demo and let's chat.

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Other Articles:

The team at Nomadfleet are constantly writing about analysing your fleet. Here is an article about calculating in detailed the per hour costing of your fleet and how utilisation is a key input: A Free Guide to Calculating Plant & Equipment Hire Rates

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