Best Practices: Fleet Utilization

Fleet utilization is an important metric for you to monitor weekly and monthly in order to help make decisions about the size of your fleet, its efficiency, and how to properly rotate units to optimize your fleet. Ultimately, you want to utilize your fleet to its fullest potential, as vehicles that are not being used are only costing money, not bringing in revenue.

How is fleet utilization calculated?

Think of fleet utilization as a measurement of your fleet's performance against its profitability. More specifically, it is the percentage of time that units (including shuttles, if applicable) have been in use during a certain time period, derived by dividing Agreement Days by Days In Service. Units that are flagged for removal, and units that spent time on a voided agreement, including exchanges, do not affect your utilization.

Managing fleet utilization

Monitor fleet utilization. TSD DEALER makes it easier than ever to monitor use of your fleet. Review fleet performance statistics on the Performance dashboard to view your utilization percentage. You can also see the number of units spent in maintenance per day and average age of units.

Flip over to the Operations dashboard for your fleet and see status breakdowns. How many units are Ready (sitting)? How many units have been idle for a long time? Are those units of a particular model, indicating a need for different models? Click a status tile to access that list of units on the Fleet Hub, and plan to use those units next. See "Fleet Operations & Performance Dashboards".

Run the Utilization report. At least twice a week, run the Utilization Report from the list of available reports. See "Utilization Report".

Use the Fleet Calculator tool to help you assess your utilization compared to recommended values for the industry. The Fleet Calculator tool on the Fleet Performance dashboard takes the number of ROs you write per month and your current Fleet Performance dashboard metrics and displays your actual length of use (LOU), utilization, turn rate, and fleet size compared to recommended values for the industry. Use this information to make business decisions that aim for a higher utilization percentage so you can write more ROs and ultimately bring in more revenue.

Set an "acceptable" target for lifetime utilization so you can more easily view performance. Use the Acceptable Performance setting to set an "acceptable" minimum target for utilization over the lifetime of each unit. This activates color-coding through TSD DEALER, so you can view, at-a-glance, how units are performing in relation to this goal and take action, as necessary. See "Acceptable Performance (Management setting)" and "Lifetime Utilization (View Unit, Assign Unit)" for more information.

Investigate low fleet utilization. Utilization reporting is based on the statuses of your units. Incorrect or outdated units statuses leads to inaccurate utilization percentages. For example, units contributing to low utilization may have been recently removed from the fleet, or they may be dirty or inconveniently parked. View a breakdown of unit statuses on your Fleet Hub Operations dashboard. See "Fleet Operations & Performance Dashboards".

Take action! Properly prepare and stage underutilized units. Check your lot to verify that the units supposed to be there are actually present. Remove any units that should no longer be in your active fleet, so they are not lowering your utilization. Cycle vehicles with extremely low or high utilization and ensure balanced utilization values fleet-wide. If certain models are underutilized, it may be an indication of a need for different models.