3 Ways Late Drivers Cut Into Your Profits (Can Be Fixed With Asset & Cargo Tracking)

By SkyBitz • Published May 9, 2018 • 4 minute read

Driver lateness can harm your fleet in numerous ways, slashing your time and budget while damaging vital relationships with partners and clients. Thankfully, you can avoid these problems by using the right technology. Let’s take a look at three ways driver lateness hurts your business, and how the right fleet tracking solution can help:

1. Late drivers can result in lost business.

This is no earth-shattering realization, but it bears reminding: if your drivers keep showing up late, don’t count on renewing your customer’s contract. You can also forget about referrals or positive reviews. When you manage a fleet, your reputation is one of your most important assets, and you could see profits take a serious hit if you can’t get driver lateness under control.

How trailer & asset tracking helps: With GPS tracking, route optimization, and real-time alerts, you can anticipate bad weather or traffic before it becomes a show-stopping issue — and save a customer relationship in the process.

2. If one driver is late, it can affect every other driver’s schedule.

Let’s say a driver goes to load up her truck to get to an important job site, only to find that the driver on the shift before hers has yet to return. She’s already in a bad mood by the time the truck finally arrives 20 minutes late.

Anxious to get to the job on time, the doesn’t realize that she’s breaking the speed limit until she gets pulled over — which, in addition to costing a traffic penalty and driving up your insurance, makes her even later. Now, your customer’s mad, your employee’s morale is tanked, and you’re doing damage control on both fronts.

That’s just one scenario that illustrates the way a single late driver can impact other employees and jobs downstream.

How trailer & asset tracking helps: You could schedule in more buffer time to account for possible delays, but that would also cut into your productivity and efficiency. Instead, you can use a fleet tracking solution that provides the real-time alerts, route optimization, and instant dispatching you need to prevent driver lateness in the first place.

3. Chronic driver lateness means fewer customers served per week.

Over time, driver lateness adds up — especially if you don’t effectively establish a culture of punctuality and accountability at your business. If a chronically tardy driver forces you to schedule more “buffer time” between trips to accommodate possible lateness, you simply won’t be able to reach as many customers. That decreases the revenue you bring in relative to the overhead you pay, hurting profits over the long haul.

How trailer & asset tracking helps:

Just putting a GPS tracking device inside each vehicle can be a powerful reminder to drivers that company time is valuable, and they’ll be held accountable for their timeliness. You can also create an incentive program to reward drivers who consistently reach their destinations in a safe, timely manner. With routing optimization and turn-by-turn instructions, you can also give drivers every tool they need to beat the clock.

4. Gain Total Visibility Into Your Fleet and Eliminate Driver Lateness

Don’t lose time and budget to schedule snafus and lost business due to driver lateness. Our Trailer & Asset Tracking Solution provides the location reports, real-time alerts, and custom analytics dashboards you need to ensure all drivers in your fleet reach their destinations promptly and safely.