22 Ways To Benefit From Fleet GPS Tracking Data

No matter what kind of vehicles your company owns, there are many ways to benefit from fleet GPS tracking data. The GPS devices can be used to help you protect your investment in the vehicles. More important, the data the devices monitor and send to your tracking station will help your employees effectively manage routing and extract information that can be used for a wide variety of management processes. If your company owns several vehicles, you need a fleet GPS system to make the most of your investment.

Types of Information You Can Gather

A fleet GPS system will be connected to a satellite mapping service that will also be able to provide information at the street level and a satellite image of streets and buildings anywhere your vehicles might go. Upon request, these mapping services can be programmed to distinguish truck routes, as well. Other information includes:

- Precise location of each vehicle up to the minute.

- Vehicle route history.

- Ability to show the proximity of vehicles to a given location.

- Notification and alerts about traffic violations, unsafe driving practices, and driving habits that waste fuel.

- Maintenance history and schedules.

- Fuel saving suggestions.

- Vehicle theft protection and recovery tools.

- Geo-fencing capabilities.

- Instant calculation of alternate routes.

Ways to Use the Data

The abundant data provided by a fleet GPS tracking system can be used in many ways to improve efficiencies, reduce fleet operating costs, improve customer service, make operations more fuel efficient, and even reduce accidents and vehicle break-downs. Whether you use you vehicles to haul freight over long distances, to respond to human emergencies, to provide product servicing and maintenance or to transport your sales force, fleet GPS tracking can help you in often unexpected ways.

1. Driver information provides the basis for coaching or re-training drivers who your fleet GPS data shows to be driving unsafely or in ways that waste fuel or damage the vehicles.

2. Driver information from fleet GPS tracking can provide the basis for performance based compensation and bonus programs, and the metrics tracking for implementation of the program.

3. Driver and route tracking maintained by your fleet GPS device provides needed documentation for dispute resolution of customer complaints, servicing time, schedule discrepancies.

4. Provide directions when a driver is lost or to redirect a driver around traffic jams or accidents causing long delays or highway closures.

5. Ability to define routes on the basis of travel time, fuel efficiency or route characteristics.

6. Identify and redirect the closest vehicle in response to an emergency.

7. Program driver and dispatcher alerts when vehicles exceed safe speeds.

8. Create anti-theft measures, such as disabling starters, locking doors, triggering sirens and defining geographic boundaries.

9. Verify time cards, automate billing and accounting steps and avoid mistakes.

10. Improve employee productivity by as much as 35%.

11. Monitor time per stop and after hours or other unauthorized vehicle use.

12. Use your scheduling accuracy and reliability as a marketing tool.

13. Rack up insurance discounts on each vehicle equipped with a fleet GPS tracking device.

The capabilities of fleet tracking expand year by year. Investment in fleet GPS tracking and monitoring will often pay for itself in money saved with fuel savings in just the first year. As your fleet becomes more efficient and more productive with these tools and the abundance of data provided, your company will reap the benefits above and more.

If you are not using a fleet GPS system you are missing out on far too many business efficiency tools. Shouldn’t you make the investment today?