Fleet monitoring, tracking systems can reduce costs, improve vehicle maintenance efforts

Whether you are a large fleet operator with hundreds of delivery or service trucks, or a smaller operator with just a few delivery vehicles, fleet efficiency and vehicle maintenance play a large role in the costs of supporting your vehicle assets. Fluctuating fuel costs, insurance costs, maintenance and tire replacement, and the cost of purchasing new vehicles quickly add up.

Fleet monitoring and management solutions that combine GPS location data, vehicle telematics, routing/scheduling capabilities, and electronic logging can significantly improve both the utilization and efficiency of a fleet, as well as ensure the vehicles are properly maintained and repaired in a timely fashion.

“Staying on top of these scheduled services as well as monitoring diagnostic trouble codes (DTCs) will ensure the life of fleet vehicles is extended as long as possible,” says Ryan Driscoll, marketing director at GPS Insight. “Outside of maintenance, monitoring fleet utilization and balancing the usage of each vehicle can prolong vehicle life as well.”

Because the expense of deploying the technology has fallen, these benefits apply to both very large and very small vehicle fleets. For parts retailers, jobbers and distributors that maintain their own fleet of local delivery vehicles, this type of fleet optimization tool can be the difference between a profit and a loss when it comes to delivery.

“Reliability, uptime, reduced wear and tear and reduced maintenance expense over the life of the vehicle matter to small fleets just as much as they do to large fleets,” says Kelly Frey, vice president of product marketing at Telogis, a Verizon subsidiary that provides GPS-based fleet management solutions. “The size of the fleet doesn't really matter, other than they may be more apt to use an external maintenance service provider.”

Improving fleet maintenance

Fleet management systems can combine contextual information such as location, weight/load, weather, route, and scheduling with rich engine diagnostic information to provide a more complete maintenance picture. The software can determine when and where maintenance should be performed, as well as by whom.

“By alerting fleet managers as soon as events occur, they can perform necessary repairs before they become much larger issues,” says Mike Fitzgerald, executive vice president and general manager at Innova Telematics Solutions. “For example, a malfunctioning O2 sensor will throw a check engine light and with the Innova system, an alert is sent immediately to the fleet manager. The value in this quick response is that the fleet manager can promptly schedule service to replace the oxygen sensor, thereby preventing further problems such as the costly replacement of the catalytic convertor.”

By using an application programming interface (API), the fleet solution can even share data with a third-party maintenance shop’s internal software to automatically send alerts or schedule repairs. “This way the shop is prepared with the right parts and has the vehicle on the schedule when it is ready to come in,” Driscoll says.

For example, Telogis offers its Telogis Maintenance Connect solution in conjunction with Ford and other partners, which collects diagnostic information and severity determination data, and then uses a configurable workflow to alert back-office staff and preferred maintenance providers of an impending service need.

This allows fleet operators to be more proactive or predictive in determining and scheduling maintenance needs, which can help avoid costly breakdowns and extend the life of the fleet vehicles.

The technology can also help measure the cost of maintaining each vehicle by logging and tracking all completed maintenance. “So if a vehicle is clearly more expensive to maintain than others, perhaps it’s time to sell it and get a newer vehicle,” Driscoll says. “It should also have the ability to schedule maintenance of any kind based on mileage, run time, or dates and then the ability to send automated reminders when service is upcoming or due on a vehicle.”

Boosting vehicle utilization

While maintenance is important, most companies deploy fleet solutions to improve utilization and efficiency. Location data is key for fleet management, since it enables route/schedule and asset optimization, as well as geofencing alerts, safety applications, and provides the ability to re-route vehicles based on their current location when emergency calls come in.

“A lot of what these companies are trying to do from the fleet side is understanding where the vehicles are, and look at the utilization of those vehicles,” says Barry White, president of Group Seven Consulting in Atlanta, which specializes in field service and fleet solutions. “When you understand utilization, you can potentially buy fewer vehicles, or adjust how those vehicles are used on the road.”

As an example, White’s company has a customer that uses the fleet solution and GPS tracking to feed operational support systems. “They can dispatch a driver to a location based on certain thresholds met in the network monitoring,” White says. “We can actually create a work order to route to the closest technician based on the telemetry position. They drive fewer miles and spend less time in the vehicle.”

For long-haul fleets, these solutions can be used for electronic logging to record federal hours of service (HoS) data as well as fuel tax information. This reporting is important to meet federal and state regulations, but manual methods of tracking hours and miles driven are often unreliable – and can result in hefty fees if there is an audit. Using a fleet solution to automatically manage this process can save dozens of hours per week for drivers and administrative staff, and ensure accurate logs.

Improve driver safety

Fleet solutions also offer safety monitoring, which is typically one of the more popular modules because the tracking not only protects drivers but also reduces costs for operators. Typically, owners will monitor speeding events, hard braking, tire pressure, seat belt usage, lane departures without signaling, harsh acceleration, and other data points. These can be used for driver coaching and evaluations. And just having a system in place can often provide savings in vehicle insurance premiums.

“You can see what happens to fuel efficiency for every five miles per hour above the speed limit your drivers are going,” White says. “That affects tires as well, which is a huge cost.”

“Unsafe driving behaviors such as harsh acceleration, hard braking, speeding, etc., are directly correlated to reduced fuel efficiency and increased wear and tear.  Increased wear and tear and increased unscheduled maintenance events result in more downtime and decreased reliability,” Frey says.

In terms of productivity, operators can also monitor MPG data, idling and unplanned miles using planned-versus-actual mileage reporting. By combining that with safety data and applying route optimization technology, companies can generate significant savings on fuel usage. Fleet solutions also remove the burden of monitoring vehicle conditions. “This direct link from vehicles to fleet managers allows drivers to focus on the job at hand and provides fleet managers with useful information to keep their fleet vehicles running safely, dependably and efficiently,” Fitzgerald says.

Know who is behind the wheel

A key piece of effective fleet management is driver identity management, which many systems accomplish via a scan of an employee ID (which may include RFID or proximity card technology), or requiring drivers to log in to a computer in the vehicle cab. You don’t just need to know where a vehicle is, you need to know who is operating it. Otherwise, many of the safety, training and dispatching benefits are difficult to achieve. “If a manager hands a driver the keys to his vehicle as a loaner for some reason, that’s all well and good but you just blew the metrics on that vehicle,” White says. “You can’t track anything if you don’t know who was operating the vehicle. Providing accurate data that is actionable is the most important thing you can do when considering adding these types of systems. You have to know who is behind the wheel.”

Companies utilizing fleet technology also need to properly fund their efforts. Fleet management should be staffed at the right level to ensure data accuracy. The sensors and technology on the trucks should also be maintained in the same way as other systems.

“With most clients, we treat a failure in a vehicle device the same as a flat tire from a process point of view,” White says. “If the power take-off sensor in a bucket truck fails, then you can’t trace the data in a way that is going to be helpful. It’s a tough pill for folks to swallow, but it pays off in spades.”

That’s because the ROI that comes from increased efficiency and fuel savings can have such a large impact on operating costs. “Saving 10 percent of your costs for rolling the vehicle down the road is not hard to achieve if the systems are managed accurately and efficiently, and the initiative is funded correctly from the support perspective,” White says. “The minute your discipline lapses, you lose those benefits.”

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