How to maximize cost-savings in your Ground Support Equipment fleet

Nov 2, 2018

Operating and maintaining a Ground Support Equipment (GSE) fleet is no small expense.

From personnel to maintenance to the GSE itself, operational budgets are quickly depleted in the daily whir of ground support operations. By streamlining and maximizing the efficiency of your GSE fleet, you can help curb your costs and stay on budget.

We’ve come up with some tips on how to help you maximize your savings and make the most of your GSE fleet.

Efficient equipment

Opting for a fuel-less, electric-powered GSE fleet is not only good for the environment, but a great way to maximize your cost-savings.

Choosing to use electric baggage tractors, pushbacks and belt loaders that use a lithium or lead-acid battery which is charged and designed to last through a busy day’s cycle, can save you hundreds, or thousands of dollars per month in fuel budget savings.

If you’re not into powering up, there are other efficient GSE options to help you curb costs such as diesel-powered equipment.

For example, in the proper environment, a diesel-powered baggage cart can be less costly to operate in comparison to a fuel-powered baggage cart.

Year over year, this can add up to be substantial savings. Not only does an efficient GSE fleet save you yearly, it gives you room to invest your budget in other cost-saving GSE technology, such as fleet telematics.

Fleet Telematics

GSE fleet telematics provide the operational intel and proprietary data to know exactly what’s happening with an airport ground fleet, at any point in time. This can help you to maximize your cost-savings in many ways:

Maximize efficiency

Using GSE fleet telematics helps to identify cost-savings and streamline efficiency. The ability to “know and see” the actions of vehicle operators – remotely and with a complete history – brings about multiple improvements to ground support operations. This includes fuel efficiency and idle times.

Controlling fuel use substantially reduces costs operating costs. Features to automatically turn-off idle vehicles are possible with telematic sensors that know when a vehicle is unoccupied and a certain time has lapsed. Cost-savings come not only from using less fuel, but also from minimizing vehicle wear (to extend asset life) and preventing excess use-hour charges.

Minimize downtime

Fleet telematics also helps you cost-save by avoiding unscheduled repairs and tracking fleet utilization. Through tracking exact GSE vehicle use-hours, available on dashboard analytics, preventative maintenance can be proactively scheduled. This helps to avoid unexpected repairs caused by a lack of maintenance.

In addition, logging vehicle use-hours tracks utilization and helps plan future investments in fleet units. Fleet telematics also provides alerts when maximum hours are approaching on lease contracts.

Big picture view, now and later

Fleet management technology helps to give you a big picture view of your operations.

This big picture view can help you identify operator behaviors that increase cost of ownership, including fuel consumption. By identifying costly operating behaviors as they occur, you can effectively stop and prevent them from occurring.

This accurate, big picture view data can reveal new strategies to reduce costs. A fleet management system’s advanced sensors and connectivity brings together the exact cost information management teams needs to keep ground support operations profitable.

This big picture view also allows ground support management to make future cost-savings decisions. Monthly reports capture data history for later review and operations planning. This can be accessed through any connected remote device such as a laptop or tablet.

Proactive maintenance and parts procurement

Not only does preventative GSE maintenance help to avoid downtime, it can also help to extend the life of your GSE fleet.

Proactive parts procurement can also help you to save money down the road. This is because it eliminates the need for last minute, costly rushed or overnight parts shipping. By being ahead of the game, you can avoid these last-minute costs.

Avro GSE offers one free year of Avro Care with the purchase of any GSE equipment. Avro Care is a vendor-managed comprehensive maintenance program, which offers tiered level options of proactive maintenance and parts procurement.

Some of the perks of Avro Care include:

  • Notification prior to scheduled maintenance intervals
  • Just-In-Time shipment of certified parts at a discounted price
  • Notification of equipment fault codes and parts replacement

Avro GSE is part of the Saskarc family of companies.

We keep your GSE equipment and overall aircraft operations working efficiently and help our customers avoid downtime caused by old, outdated or malfunctioning GSE. We help customers modernize their fleet with advanced technology to maximize reliability, operational efficiency, and overall safety.

We provide GSE equipment service that is proactive, cost effective and designed for rapid problem response and resolution. We take care of the ground so your business stays in the air!