How Our Fleet Tracking Services Saves You Money
The use of GPS tracking devices in fleet vehicles helps reduce fuel costs, increase employee productivity, and improve your company's safety profile. In this guide, we'll cover how and why GPS fleet tracking can save your business money.
Improving Gas Mileage with GPS Tracking
The cheapest gallon of fuel is the one you don't have to buy. GPS fleet tracking devices can improve fleet fuel mileage in many ways. Waste of fuel usually results from factors like speeding, unnecessary idling, and use of inefficient routes. When dispatchers or supervisors discover situations where excess idling or speeding contribute to lower fuel mileage, they can act swiftly to encourage positive changes in driver behavior. The main ways GPS fleet tracking helps reduce fuel costs are by:
- Allowing more efficient routing
- Prevention of start-stop driving
- Providing active driver feedback
- Sending job changes directly to the GPS tracking devices of affected drivers
More Efficient Routing.
Many GPS fleet tracking systems come with smart driving software that can easily calculate the most efficient routes, helping drivers avoid traffic jams. What's more, when a new job comes in, dispatchers can quickly determine which driver is closest to the job location so that fewer total miles are driven getting to jobs.
Prevention of Start-Stop Driving.
Drivers can be routed away from traffic jams and from routes that become clogged during rush hours. This helps cut down on wasted time and wasted fuel. By alerting drivers to nearby accidents or congestion, GPS tracking systems keep fleets moving and reduce time spent sitting in traffic idling.
Active Driver Feedback.
Some GPS fleet tracking systems allow real-time driver feedback to discourage harsh braking, excessive idling, and speeding. Additionally, advanced reporting capabilities allow supervisors to confront drivers who have been speeding with accurate information on the time and location of speeding incidents. While this may seem counterintuitive when it comes to getting drivers where they need to go quickest, it saves money in terms of fuel costs, and potentially in terms of liability.
Sending Job Changes Directly to GPS Tracking Devices of Affected Drivers.
When new jobs come in, GPS fleet tracking can easily locate the driver nearest the customer and assign the job to that driver. The efficiency improvements can allow one to two additional service calls per day, per driver, and the savings really add up.
GPS fleet tracking can easily save you thousands of dollars per year in fuel costs alone.
GPS fleet tracking also helps you operate your business with a smaller environmental footprint. Reducing miles driven and choosing the most efficient routes helps your fleet burn less fuel and reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and particulates. Reduced fleet miles and driver overtime enhance profitability, keep customers happy, and are friendlier to the environment.
Tracking Employee Productivity
When you have access to real-time data about driver and vehicle movement, you can more easily monitor compliance with working time guidelines, track proof of delivery, and even determine where each vehicle has traveled for up to 90 days. When mobile employees are aware that their driving is tracked, they are less likely to deviate from routes or speed. Many systems include handy "geo fence" capability that notifies dispatchers when a technician enters or leaves a particular location.
Another process that can be greatly streamlined with the help of GPS fleet tracking is logging of data into your records database. When calls and deliveries can be quickly and easily loaded into a database as drivers complete tasks, records are timelier and more accurate. Some systems are able to integrate their databases with the GPS systems themselves, allowing automation of some database entry tasks. This drastically cuts down on the time drivers spend manually entering data.
The data entered into customer service databases do more than make reports and keep records. Data can also be analyzed and used to optimize and assign routes as efficiently as possible. With real-time fleet tracking, last-minute or unplanned job requests can easily be assigned to the nearest driver with the right equipment for the task.
The results include not only increase employee productivity, but also lead to measurable improvements in customer satisfaction. Accurate tracking allows workers and dispatchers to create a good estimate of how long a particular job usually takes. This allows more accurate ETAs (estimated times of arrival), helping customers plan their time more efficiently as well.
Feature-rich reports made from GPS fleet tracking systems allow supervisors to more easily determine where inefficiencies exist so they can address them, improving employee efficiency even more. It is not unreasonable to expect increases in productive time of an hour per day per employee due to smart use of GPS fleet tracking data. And with the ability to monitor driver productivity from mobile devices, supervisors and dispatchers improve their own productivity as well.
Improving Safety and Cutting Insurance Premiums
Though it is important to hire carefully, it's not easy to know your employees' driving habits when you're managing your business's everyday operations. You may not find out about problems with an employee's driving habits until after a moving violation or accident. The number one factor in unsafe driving is excessive speed.
Naturally, you want your drivers to get to their destinations as quickly as possible, but efficient routing and optimal assignment of jobs to fleet members can accomplish this without the dangers of speeding.
The telemetrics provided by GPS fleet tracking systems give you information on speed, mileage, and idle time. It is almost as if the supervisor is in every vehicle. When your system automatically records leading indicators of driver behavior, you can address problematic driving early on. The long-term result is lower insurance premiums, fewer Workers Compensation claims, and easier identification of high-risk drivers. If one of your drivers should be involved in an accident, your tracking system's record-keeping can help reconstruct accidents and potentially assist you in legal proceedings.
Some companies combine GPS fleet tracking training with driver safety training for a more comprehensive approach to reducing your liability and costs. When drivers know that risky driving can be monitored by their supervisor, they are far less likely to engage in risky behavior. And if this doesn't get the message across, your GPS fleet tracking system provides you with concrete data you can use to confront a problematic employee and create a corrective plan of action.
Driver safety does go beyond how the driver operates a fleet vehicle, however. For example, if a driver has to travel alone to a remote destination, your GPS fleet tracking can help ensure that the driver remains in contact with the home office. Geo-fencing capability can be used by supervisors or dispatchers to learn exactly when a driver arrived at a particular destination and when he or she left it.
GPS fleet tracking can easily save you thousands of dollars per year in fuel costs alone.GPS fleet tracking also helps you operate your business with a smaller environmental footprint. Reducing miles driven and choosing the most efficient routes helps your fleet burn less fuel and reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and particulates. Reduced fleet miles and driver overtime enhance profitability, keep customers happy, and are friendlier to the environment.
Tracking Employee Productivity
When you have access to real-time data about driver and vehicle movement, you can more easily monitor compliance with working time guidelines, track proof of delivery, and even determine where each vehicle has traveled for up to 90 days. When mobile employees are aware that their driving is tracked, they are less likely to deviate from routes or speed. Many systems include handy "geo fence" capability that notifies dispatchers when a technician enters or leaves a particular location.
Another process that can be greatly streamlined with the help of GPS fleet tracking is logging of data into your records database. When calls and deliveries can be quickly and easily loaded into a database as drivers complete tasks, records are timelier and more accurate. Some systems are able to integrate their databases with the GPS systems themselves, allowing automation of some database entry tasks. This drastically cuts down on the time drivers spend manually entering data.
The data entered into customer service databases do more than make reports and keep records. Data can also be analyzed and used to optimize and assign routes as efficiently as possible. With real-time fleet tracking, last-minute or unplanned job requests can easily be assigned to the nearest driver with the right equipment for the task.
The results include not only increase employee productivity, but also lead to measurable improvements in customer satisfaction. Accurate tracking allows workers and dispatchers to create a good estimate of how long a particular job usually takes. This allows more accurate ETAs (estimated times of arrival), helping customers plan their time more efficiently as well.
Feature-rich reports made from GPS fleet tracking systems allow supervisors to more easily determine where inefficiencies exist so they can address them, improving employee efficiency even more. It is not unreasonable to expect increases in productive time of an hour per day per employee due to smart use of GPS fleet tracking data. And with the ability to monitor driver productivity from mobile devices, supervisors and dispatchers improve their own productivity as well.
Though it is important to hire carefully, it's not easy to know your employees' driving habits when you're managing your business's everyday operations. You may not find out about problems with an employee's driving habits until after a moving violation or accident. The number one factor in unsafe driving is excessive speed.
Naturally, you want your drivers to get to their destinations as quickly as possible, but efficient routing and optimal assignment of jobs to fleet members can accomplish this without the dangers of speeding.
The telemetrics provided by GPS fleet tracking systems give you information on speed, mileage, and idle time. It is almost as if the supervisor is in every vehicle. When your system automatically records leading indicators of driver behavior, you can address problematic driving early on. The long-term result is lower insurance premiums, fewer Workers Compensation claims, and easier identification of high-risk drivers. If one of your drivers should be involved in an accident, your tracking system's record-keeping can help reconstruct accidents and potentially assist you in legal proceedings.
Some companies combine GPS fleet tracking training with driver safety training for a more comprehensive approach to reducing your liability and costs. When drivers know that risky driving can be monitored by their supervisor, they are far less likely to engage in risky behavior. And if this doesn't get the message across, your GPS fleet tracking system provides you with concrete data you can use to confront a problematic employee and create a corrective plan of action.
Driver safety does go beyond how the driver operates a fleet vehicle, however. For example, if a driver has to travel alone to a remote destination, your GPS fleet tracking can help ensure that the driver remains in contact with the home office. Geo-fencing capability can be used by supervisors or dispatchers to learn exactly when a driver arrived at a particular destination and when he or she left it.
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