Driver and fleet management is a process that everyone should be involved in. It should start at the top and make it’s way all the way down to the drivers themselves. Fleet managers should be used to facilitate your management system and communicate to the drivers themselves that the safe and efficient use of all vehicles is in the best interest of everyone in the company.
A lot of companies will implement the use of a GPS fleet solution and they never really allow it to truly succeed. We’ll talk about a few ways to put a good system in place and make sure it becomes successful.
Tracking Idle Time
A vehicle idling during the day may seem benign enough, but the average vehicle will burn roughly 1 to 1.5 gallons every hour of idle, or $3.45 to $5.18 every hour. Now just do the math for a forty hour work week with the number of vehicles you operate and wow! That can be a lot of money that is just idled away… with our GPS fleet management system you will receive an idle warning when a vehicle exceeds your set perimeters, these warnings will show up in reports and they can be used by managers to reduce the total amount of engine idle in your fleet. An idle report can be run so you can see the exact amount of time an individual vehicle or your entire fleet idled in a set amount of time.
How can you use this to help motivate your drivers? Two ways, first off make sure any idle alert that is generated is sent to you that driver’s phones as well as their supervisor. If they see the alert and know that their boss is seeing the same think they will respect it immediately and understand that the alerts need to be minimized right away. Secondly, get a standard amount of idle for your fleet for a week, two weeks or month. Then make a game out of finding the driver that has the fewest minutes of idle time and make sure they receive a cash prize or gift card. The amount saved will far exceed the amount spent per month.
Tracking and Eliminating Speeding
A good GPS Fleet Management system will have a speed app built into it to help eliminate two kinds of speeding. First off, you may want to just cap the total speed your fleet drives, this would be an OverSpeed alert. An OverSpeed alert basically will tell you when any vehicle exceeds 65 mile per hour, lets say (user defined). As a fleet expert I’m sure you understand that the fuel burn over 65 becomes exponential and can cost a company a lot of money. These alerts need to be sent to managers, owners and especially the drivers as well. When a driver gets an alert they know they’ve been busted and will slow down, saving money and maybe even a life.
Our GPS fleet solution has the ability to dig down deep into your fleet operations and determine if a vehicle is speeding on any given road or highway. So if you wanted more than just an OverSpeed alert and wanted a report that showed the total percentage of speeding based on the posted speed limit, we can do that too. This is a great opportunity for a game as well, and will definitely reduce fuel burn and even litigation. Litigation for any speeding incident or accident can cost a company everything. Eliminating speeding can be your companies best move in this economy.
Contact Driver Watch Systems today to learn how we can help you save time and money.
Sources: FleetNews
