This article comes from Jonathan Ramsey, Senior Manager, Customer & Solutions Marketing, EMEA at Samsara

The clocks go back this month, and a large share of the UK working day will shift into darkness. Delivery rounds take place under cover of darkness, while gritters and highways crews move to night shifts. Soon, drivers who haven’t seen ice in eight months will meet it again on a Tuesday morning without warning.

Winter always exposes some familiar, unwelcome problems. The good news is that fleets with the right technology have a playbook to close gaps before colder conditions make them impossible to ignore. But now is the time to put it all into place, not after the first snowfall. 

Automation makes maintenance watertight

Cold weather uncovers a lot of dormant vehicle faults. Marginal batteries fail on the first hard frost, while worn tyres that coped with dry tarmac lose their grip on compacted snow. 

Daily walkarounds are most fleets’ first line of defence against common issues. But a clipboard walkaround is the exact sort of routine that ends up rushed on a cold, wet, dark morning in November. To ensure they don’t leave crucial oversight to chance, fleets are overhauling their paper-based, manual checks with digital solutions. 

“We’ve saved a great deal on printing costs alone,” said Shaun Carter, Regional Manager of electrical retail giants AO, on their switch to a digital walkaround system that captures faults and routes them straight to the workshop. “Plus, it’s a lot easier for our drivers to manage. They can quickly see any existing damages, log faults, and capture images with the touch of a button—it saves them a lot of time on every job.” 

Breaking your dependency on manual processes will make your fleet safer throughout the winter.     

Harsh events are crucial indicators of future risk

Collisions are a frequent occurrence when the seasons change. But they tend to follow a similar pattern. A vehicle is travelling at a speed that might pass without consequence on dry tarmac, but the gap ahead is tighter than it should be, and grip disappears at the worst moment. The decisions that determined the outcome were made several seconds earlier.

This is why measuring harsh braking and harsh cornering rates is so important in winter. Think of them as narrow misses — the more they happen, the higher the chance that the worst unfolds later. Operators who record this baseline data have a much higher chance of averting disaster by making safer behaviours stick. Olleco, which collects and processes used cooking oil across the UK, achieved a 57% reduction in harsh turning and braking within 12 months by pairing vehicle data with a peer-to-peer coaching programme and driver recognition awards. 

The technology captured the problem, but the people changed it. If driver representatives and unions are involved early, and data is used to support drivers rather than catch them out, adoption tends to hold through the winter rather than fading in January.

Idling is the winter habit worth watching

Here’s a scenario you probably haven’t worried about for a few months. It’s two degrees outside, and the driver starting an early morning shift is only human, so they’ve left their engine running to keep the cab warm. It’s understandable, but it’s expensive. It also pumps emissions into the residential and urban areas where air quality is under most scrutiny, which matters for organisations reporting against net zero commitments. 

To make good on their ESG commitments, drainage specialists Lanes Group had targeted a 50% reduction in unproductive idling. By tracking data from individual vehicles and coaching drivers accordingly, they managed to smash past this target in four months and reduce idling time by 83%, saving an enormous £155,780 in fuel costs. If you track idling weekly through the winter, both your compliance and finance departments will thank you for it. 

Find your weak spots before the winter finds them for you

You haven’t got long left before the elements start to bite, so now is the time to root out hidden vulnerabilities in your operations. Work with your staff to correct unsafe or costly behaviours, and streamline any patchy safety protocols. You’ll thank yourself when the spring comes.