Wednesday, February 10, 2010

GPS Fleet Management Makes Your Life Easier

By Todd Cavanaugh

Managing a fleet of vehicles for a company is a very complex and challenging job. It can also be stressful, especially if managing the dispatching and timely arrival of vehicles is critical to the success of your company. You can excel at your job with the help of GPS fleet management.

You might know that GPS fleet management equipment allows you to see (on your laptop) exactly where every vehicle is at a particular point in time. But do you know that this same equipment also maintains a complete history for each vehicle of where, when and how that vehicle has traveled over any time-frame? If you notice an anomaly at any time, you can download a report of the history of each appropriate vehicle and analyze the cause for the anomaly and determine what corrective action is appropriate.

Fleet managers also usually know that GPS fleet management equipment gives you the ability to monitor the exact location of any or all vehicles at any time. The same equipment gives you the ability to set up conditions that will alert you instantly or populate report for such activities as idling, moving outside a defined area, speeding, stopped vehicles, and even unsafe driving. Your GPS fleet management system can also track driving behaviors that reduce fuel efficiencies.

If you want to receive alerts for emerging mechanical problems, you can choose a GPS fleet management system that includes maintenance scheduling systems. You can simplify the task of monitoring the maintenance schedules of all those vehicles manually and prevent costly breakdowns by fixing problems before they cripple the vehicle.

Your GPS fleet management system will monitor fuel mileage reports for you, allowing you to simply download the reports you need to manage engine tuning, most efficient routing and driver behaviors. With these reports from your GPS fleet management equipment your will extend the life of your vehicles, reduce schedule disruptions due to breakdowns, increase fuel efficiency, and run a leaner and greener operation. This will show up on the bottom line in big cost savings.

If theft prevention is an issue for your vehicles a GPS fleet management system can help you in two important ways. First, if a vehicle is stolen your GPS system will allow you to help police locate the vehicle quickly. Second, GPS fleet management systems also provide the capacity to disable the engine and lock the doors from a remote location. This is why most insurance companies reduce rates as much as 15% on every vehicle equipped with GPS.

These GPS fleet management capabilities will help you spend the time saved on paperwork using the data to coach your drivers in the driving habits that will reduce fuel consumption, reduce carbon emissions, cut costs, and improve productivity. Unlike most managers, you will have the chance to improve both employee productivity and asset productivity (your fleet).

If you manage a fleet of trucks that make deliveries to various distributors throughout the country, for example, you might have different drivers or different vehicles traveling the same routes at various times. On a particular week you notice that the mileage for a particular run seems much higher than you remember the mileage when someone else drove the route the previous week. Using your GPS fleet management reports, you discover that the driver assigned to the route this week clocked 250 miles more than the driver who covered the same route the previous week. You also find that the driver was on the road three days longer - and all of the extra time was on the outgoing leg of the trip. By comparing other reports from your GPS fleet management system, you discover that this is consistent whenever the specific driver covers any route. With just a little more study of the reports, you find that this driver makes at least four extra stops on each trip.

Any fleet manager can excel at his or her job with GPS fleet management equipment. Among the many things the system will help you accomplish more efficiently are:

- maintain a complete history of the travels of every vehicle and the actions of every driver

- monitor driving habits for use in coaching drivers in achieving greater efficiencies and saving fuel, time and costs

- manage maintenance of the fleet with greater ease

- prevent robberies and help police locate a vehicle if one is stolen

- improve employee productivity

- manage vehicles for greater efficiency and longer life.

For a small investment in the GPS device, a minimal monthly monitoring fee, and a few minutes for installation, you can be saving time and money instantly. Most companies that install GPS fleet management equipment find that they save enough in the first 90 days to pay for equipment, installation and the first year of monitoring.

About the Author:

0 comments: