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The top 5 emerging vehicle fleet management trends for 2024

By Verizon Connect Team December 6, 2023

This year, a total of 1,538 fleet management companies, mobility professionals and business owners participated in the Verizon Connect 2024 Fleet Technology Trends survey. Their responses showed powerful insights into how fleets can improve their operations, including these five emerging fleet tech trends.

Trend #1: Cost savings & vehicle fleet management: the perfect match

According to the 2024 Fleet Technology Trends Survey, more fleet management companies have been able to achieve cost savings in strategic business areas with the help of a fleet management solution. Cost savings can help positively impact business profitability and become a strategic KPI for fleet managers.

And when we say strategic, it is because 69% of businesses said that increased costs was one of the biggest challenges (extremely or very impactful), followed by fuel (65%), labour costs (61%) and safety (60%). So being able to improve in these areas and reduce costs can make a huge difference for businesses.

These mobility professionals share information about cost savings achieved since implementing a GPS tracking solution in key areas like:

Download the Fleet Technology Trends Report Europe 2024 to learn more about how vehicle fleet management can help reduce fleet costs in the top 5 industries.

Trend #2: Fuel efficiency for a healthy fuel economy

One of the most important factors affecting fuel economy in your business is driver behaviour. In fact, research confirms that “aggressive driving (speeding, rapid acceleration and braking) wastes fuel. It can lower fuel mileage by roughly 15% to 30% at motorway speeds and 10% to 40% in stop-and-go traffic.”(1)

So having a clear overview of driver behaviour for all of your team is key in reducing fuel consumption. According to our last fleet technology trends survey, 53% of respondents decreased their fuel consumption.

Regarding reducing fuel consumption and fleet costs, GPS fleet tracking software can help fleet management companies:

Monitor driver behaviour.
Optimise routing for the whole team.
Control vehicle activity to identify idling and stops.
Coach drivers on efficient driving techniques.

Trend #3 Compliance is easy

One of the latest ROADPOL (European Roads Policing Network) checks revealed that the violation rate was 24.01% for freight transport and 4.67% for buses. For freight traffic, this means that a violation was found in almost 1 in 4 trucks checked. And the trend shows the violation rate continues to increase for trucks. (2)

Furthermore, the most common violations were with tachographs: “7,564 drivers (7,365 trucks and 199 buses checked) went against Europe-wide valid social regulations, meaning they drove their vehicle for longer than legally allowed without complying with the mandatory breaks. The prescribed tachographs were not properly managed 1,986 times.” (3)

As we have seen, violations and fines for trucks and buses are common and costly, and it is necessary to monitor driving times, rest periods of drivers and accurately manage tachographs to mitigate tachograph infringement and violations.

Vehicle fleet management technology can help truck and bus owners to:

Control drivers’ time and routes remotely.
Monitor rest periods of the whole team.
Remotely download tachograph data.
Create a preventive fleet maintenance program to boost the health of your vehicles and to be ready for roadside inspections.

Download the Fleet Technology Trends Report Europe 2024 to learn more about how vehicle fleet management can help your fleet simplify compliance.

Trend #4 Proactively managing operations

Road congestion has a huge impact on urban mobility, fuel consumption and environment. Research “has shown that fluid traffic flows have a positive impact on urban economic growth. Studies suggest that a 10% decrease in journey times can boost productivity by 2.9% and that, in highly congested regions, free-flowing traffic could mean productivity gains of up to 30 %.” (4)

So, one of the biggest potential benefits of vehicle fleet management is that you can see, on a live-map, in near-real time, all your fleet activity and can decide to change routes if you know there is a traffic jam in a specific area and act proactively.,

And fleet technology can help with other daily operations, such as::

Control daily operations remotely
Choose safe routes and work proactively to avoid road congestion
Analyse fleet performance over time to improve key areas
Optimise routing as it adds EVs to the lineup

From our latest survey, 76% of fleet managers explain that a GPS fleet management solution is “very or extremely beneficial” to manage their fleets.

Download the Fleet Technology Trends Report Europe 2024 to learn more about how vehicle fleet management can help improve managing daily operations in businesses like yours.

Trend #5 Sustainable fleets and businesses

Smart data can help your business to be more sustainable and efficient, which in turn makes it easier to accomplish the specified targets for reducing emission.

By having real data at your fingertips, your business can make decisions more easily and more confidently, see where improvements can be made to your fleet, remain competitive, and foresee certain behaviours.

And GPS fleet tracking software can help fleets:

Measure vehicles’ fuel efficiency by comparing fuel purchases against speeding, harsh driving, and idling.
Analyse fuel purchases for each vehicle and possible fuel loss.
Control carbon footprint and work to reduce carbon emissions.
Reduce fuel consumption across all vehicles.
Boost a predictive maintenance program for the entire fleet.

Our latest Fleet Technology Trends Survey revealed that 50% of businesses improved sustainability and 45% improved efficiency since implementing a GPS fleet management solution.

Discover more technology trends to advance your fleet

The 2024 Fleet Technology Trends Report reveals which goals survey respondents achieved with asset tracking and how quickly they saw an ROI as a result. Download the report here to see the asset tracking ROI results.

Discover more technology trends to advance your fleet.

The 2024 Fleet Technology Trends Report uncovers even more ways fleet management companies are using technology to overcome business challenges, achieve their goals, improve operating efficiency, and drive down costs.