The Fleet Management Solution Maximizing Productivity Through Outsourcing

by Krista Rose
Director, Yale Fleet Management

Yale recognizes that customers’ needs are constantly changing. And Yale’s solutions for its customers change with them. As manufacturing and fabrication facility managers deal with issues of planned growth, cost containment and continuous improvement, Yale’s experts are looking at new ways to maximize productivity and cost savings.

Yale offers customers a comprehensive line of lift trucks and services, including:

• Strategically located, outstanding dealer network
• Rental Services
• National Accounts Program
• Yale Gold Service

Yale also offers cost-effective ways to finance equipment through Yale Financial Services and provides replacement parts for Yale and other brands of materials handling equipment.

The ultimate customer solution is Yale’s Fleet Management Program, combining all these services, plus Yale expertise, to create a comprehensive, customized solution for customers both large and small to outsource their materials handling operations.

Under a Yale Fleet Management agreement, Yale analyzes a customer’s materials handling administration and processes, and offers cost-saving solutions for today and years to come, allowing companies to concentrate on their core business.  Yale delivers a total solutions approach to material handling requirements that provides customers increased productivity, reduced downtime and the lowest total cost of ownership.

Yale has fleet management contracts with more than 30,000 trucks centrally administered from its Greenville facility, plus another 100,000+ units managed directly by Yale’s distribution network.

The Cost Mountain

Yale uses the analogy of “The Cost Mountain” to explain the advantages of Fleet Management.

To understand the real cost of material handling, customers must look past the cost of the lift truck – the most visible cost – like the top of a mountain.  In reality, that’s a very small cost of the business.

A much larger amount of money is spent on use costs such as maintenance, parts inventory and repairs.  This is the middle of the mountain, less visible, but greater mass than the top. 

The base of the mountain is where the largest dollars are spent – capital appropriations requests, human resource costs, purchase order and invoice costs and more. 

When a customer looks at the entire mountain, identifying all costs, the advantages of Fleet Management become very apparent.

The Value of Fleet Management

Few companies offer true fleet management – which is why Yale is the industry leader.

A Yale Fleet Management agreement begins with a comprehensive evaluation and analysis of a customer’s materials handling operation. With this initial report, Yale guarantees its customers will save at least 15% off their materials handling budget in the first year.

Yale evaluates a customer’s facilities and fleet needs to determine the right trucks for the job.  When necessary, Yale re-engineers the fleet to ensure the customer has the appropriate type of trucks as well as the most efficient quantity for its operations.  On an ongoing basis, Yale then manages maintenance and administrative processes, operator training and planned truck replacement – all focused toward maximizing productivity and cost efficiency.

A properly executed fleet management program will:

• Evaluate the existing network
• Establish the proper specifications to meet the customer’s fleet requirements
• Provide a central phone number for customer service
• Standardize parts and labor costs for repairs and maintenance
• Retire equipment that is no longer productive
• Purchase new equipment to meet the customer’s existing and future material handling needs
• Establish a maintenance schedule for all equipment, keeping lift trucks and the rest of the fleet productive through proper maintenance practices and tracking
• Identify the paperwork involved in managing a large fleet and reduce the number of monthly invoices from hundreds to one

Yale Fleet Management is not a one-time solution.  Because Yale is committed to ongoing and long-term partnerships with customers, the Yale Fleet Management agreement includes frequent recommendations to customers, identifying new opportunities for savings year over year.

Trends in Fleet Management

The goal for every manager in a fabrication or manufacturing facility is better data collection, targeted automation, tracking and reducing overall fleet costs.  Implementing a fleet management program, combined with a sophisticated, wireless data telemetry system, helps customers reduce operating costs by tracking usage in real-time.

Utilizing a wireless fleet management tracking system mounted on each lift truck, as in Yale’s Wireless Asset Net system developed with I.D. Systems, captures fleet data by truck and generates easy to use reports for management.  Data systems of this type allow users to:

• View vehicle locations and activity remotely—and in real time
• Control access to vehicles and require electronic OSHA inspection checklists to be completed
• Capture hour meter readings by truck
• Generate truck utilization reports and historical movement of trucks report to analyze excessive idle periods
• Track equipment usage across the facility/fleet on an hourly basis
• Establish periodic maintenance (PM) schedules based on actual hours which increases efficiency of PM’s

This data, along with the analysis and expertise provided by a company’s dedicated fleet manager, will lead to cost savings and improved fleet efficiency and productivity that directly impact the bottom line.

Delivering Fleet Management

As part of its Fleet Management service, Yale offers a dedicated account team from its headquarters in Greenville, NC, professionals assigned to accounts and available to answer questions and find solutions at any time.  With an account manager as the point of contact between the customer and Yale, the lag time between an issue arising and finding a solution is greatly diminished.

In addition to the account team, Yale has the most comprehensive dealer network in the Americas supporting Yale Fleet Management customers.  Yale dealers offer consistent procedures, labor rates, parts pricing and policies to every Yale Fleet Management customer, wherever the customer may be. With this process in place, Yale can guarantee and provide consistent, high-quality customer service on a national basis.

Yale: Solutions for the Long Run

Yale understands customer needs and provides creative solutions for the long run.  Whether it’s finding the right lift truck for the application and budget, or managing an entire fleet of rolling stock in a multi-building plant, Yale will do whatever it takes to increase customers’ productivity and get the job done.

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