Better Fleet: A practical playbook for using benchmarking to improve fleet performance

1. Start with a small number of meaningful KPIs

Avoid measuring everything.

Instead, benchmark the metrics that have the greatest impact on fleet performance:

  • Cost per mile
  • Vehicle availability
  • Fuel consumption
  • Collision frequency
  • Maintenance compliance

The Jaama Fleet Compliance & Cost Benchmark Report recommends focusing on the areas that have the biggest influence on cost control and compliance before expanding your reporting.

Tools to explore:

2. Compare your fleet against similar operators

Internal reporting tells you whether performance has improved.

Benchmarking tells you whether it's good enough.

Platforms such as Geotab compare fleets with similar vehicle types, operating patterns and geography, helping identify where fuel economy, idling or driver behaviour differ from comparable operators.

The biggest opportunities often come from understanding why another fleet is achieving better results.

Tools to explore:

3. Turn poor benchmark scores into targeted action

Benchmarking should trigger action, not another report.

For example, Driving for Better Business enables fleets to benchmark collision frequency against both the all-user average and recognised good practice.

If collision performance falls behind benchmark, focus investment where it will have the biggest impact, including:

  • Driver coaching
  • Behaviour monitoring
  • Risk reduction training

Services to explore:

4. Benchmark each depot, not just the whole fleet

Fleet averages can hide poor performance.

Compare depots, contracts and vehicle types against one another to identify why some operations consistently outperform others.

Questions worth asking include:

  • Which depot has the lowest cost per mile?
  • Which vehicles experience the most downtime?
  • Which teams consistently achieve the best fuel economy?

Small operational differences often reveal the biggest improvement opportunities.

Tools to explore:

5. Review your benchmarks regularly

Benchmarking shouldn't be an annual exercise.

The strongest fleets review performance monthly or quarterly so emerging issues can be addressed before costs escalate.

Regular reviews also help measure whether operational changes are actually delivering results.

A benchmark only has value if it's used to track progress over time.

6. Combine operational and financial data

Performance data becomes more valuable when viewed alongside cost data.

Bring together:

  • Telematics
  • Fuel spend
  • Maintenance costs
  • Compliance records
  • Incident data

This provides a clearer picture of what's driving fleet expenditure and where interventions will deliver the greatest return.

Platforms to explore:

7. Benchmark to improve, not to compete

The objective isn't to outperform every other fleet.

It's to outperform your own previous performance.

Use benchmarking to set realistic targets, monitor progress and celebrate incremental improvements rather than chasing headline numbers.

The most successful fleet operators treat benchmarking as a continuous improvement process, using reliable data to guide better operational decisions year after year.

Read guidance in this series:

Why fleets still don't know how they benchmark

What effective fleet benchmarking actually looks like

Similar Stories

Back to blog