Managing a fleet of emergency vehicles may not sound as urgent as the cases where they are needed. However, operations in the garage are just as crucial to public safety as they are on the road. You have to improve your fleet constantly to ensure that your operations are as safe, efficient, cost-effective, and sustainable as can be. The following tips will help you do just that.
Clean up spills wisely
Every year, thousands of pounds of absorbent pads and floor dry are used to clean up coolant and oil spills from garages, only to end up in landfills. It also takes a lot of time for technicians to use floor dry, which comes with trip hazards. Stepping on it might also leave tracks on the material.
Instead of using these environmentally harmful cleaning options, buy a pneumatic wet/dry vacuum cleaner to clean up spills. 55-gallon tank vacuum cleaners can clean floors rapidly. When the tanks are full, your staff can dump the liquids into appropriate containers to be disposed of or recycled. For instance, the materials picked up by your vacuum can be disposed in the used oil and coolant tank, and the sludge sent through a truck wash recycler to ensure zero waste. Depending on the size of your area, it might be best to have 2 or 3 vacuum cleaners throughout the place in different locations.
Encourage involvement in upfitting planning
A common problem is drivers demanding upfitting equipment that goes over the company’s budget. To address this, involve your drivers in the planning process, so they can understand the budget’s limitations and to come up with the best upfitting solutions.
Choose emergency vehicle upfitting experts that provide not only Public Safety USA-certified services, but also a lifetime warranty on their work, like the ones offered in TCS Upfitting. Allow the upfitting experts to talk directly with your drivers so they can work out solutions that meet drivers’ requirements and stay within your budget.
Add a satellite repair facility at the headquarters
The time it takes to bring emergency vehicles in for repair, and then return them is often longer than the time it took to perform the service. As a solution, open a repair facility right at where your vehicles are. If your facility has limited space, you can set up a one-man facility in the parking lot. You can also have it pre-constructed in the building. If you choose to go with a newly constructed site, make sure that the facility complies with environmental regulations.
This solution will cut the added cost of vehicle pickup and delivery. For every job your on-site technician does, you will also save at least 30 minutes. Creating the satellite repair facility may take up a lot of resources, but it effectively improves your fleet’s efficiency while reducing your expenditure in the long run.
More lives depend on emergency vehicles than the usual vehicles on the road. Although making any of these improvements may seem like a small change, it goes a long way in improving how responders address emergencies and allowing them to save more lives.