There are several ways to abuse the privilege of driving literally any kind of company vehicle:

- running errands on the way from the last business stop back to the garage

- using the truck for your weekend moving business

- using the company car to take your kids places on weekends

Each of these abuses of the privilege of driving a company vehicle can be detected by tracking vehicle movement. With a simple GPS tracking device that attaches to the steering column of each vehicle, you can not only know where each vehicle is at any moment (because you will be tracking vehicle movement), but you can also use the capability of tracking vehicle movement and save the history to prove where each vehicle has been and when it was there.

Consider the cost to the company if every vehicle is being driven an extra 100 miles per week. Assuming that your vehicles average 10 miles per gallon around town, each vehicle will use ten gallons of gas. If gas is selling for $2.75, each vehicle is costing the company an extra $27.50 per week. You can do the rest of the math to carry that out by the number of vehicles being used and then multiplying by 52 weeks. That comes to $1,430 per vehicle per year – and that’s just for gas!

By the time you add up the pro rated costs for everything else, you could be saving a bundle by tracking vehicle use. Take a few minutes to figure it out. Gather all of the costs on a ‘per vehicle’ and a per mile basis: fuel, oil, insurance, maintenance, parts, wear and tear, tires, license tags, taxes and the risks of having the vehicle on the road.

When you add up all of these costs for every vehicle that might be in use for something other than business, the amount could be staggering if it is widespread. But if you invested the small cost of tracking vehicle movement with a GPS tracking device, you could pay for the device and the monitoring service and still hand the boss a huge amount of money. If your fleet is like most, the cost of tracking vehicle activity with a GPS device would be recovered in just three months. In just ninety days you could expect to recover the cost of the device for tracking vehicle movement and the cost of a full year of monitoring.

Finally, consider that I’ve only asked you to think about the cost of unauthorized use of company vehicles and the cost savings you could achieve by tracking vehicle use. Now think about the money you could save if you could prove that some of your drivers were intentionally taking longer routes from one place to the next, or that by tracking vehicle movement you could prove that some of your drivers are sitting somewhere killing time. The more you think about the value of tracking vehicle movement, the greater the potential savings you can achieve for your company.

For more information about the benefits of tracking vehicle behavior, get the free report, “7 Ways Your Company Can Save Thousands of Dollars With GPS Fleet Tracking.”  Many companies have substantially increased their revenue and lowered their costs by installing a GPS tracking system for their fleet. To calculate the ROI for your company, see the GPS vehicle ROI calculator.

Do you recall the news reports a few years ago when UPS decided to have all of their drivers plan their routes and make their deliveries without making left turns? They did some analysis and found that left turns were burning fuel, time and money. How did they perform the analysis? They used GPS vehicle tracking to reduce costs.

GPS vehicle tracking allowed the company to monitor where the trucks were at any given time. They were able to extract reports showing the average wait time to make right turns and to make left turns. They were also able to analyze the amount of extra fuel required to make left turns (due to waiting for traffic to clear or for lights to change). They were also able to convert their findings to dollars lost. They determined that making left turns was simply too expensive.

In September of 2009, the mayor of Dyersburg, Tennessee reported on initial findings about city employee productivity and responsiveness to resident requests for services. Using new GPS vehicle tracking the city discovered several ways to improve productivity, reduce operating costs, eliminate waste, and improve customer satisfaction.

GPS vehicle tracking provides a wealth of information to management, including:

- driving speed (fuel efficiency is lost when speed exceeds 60 mph).

- unsafe or inefficient driving habits.

- use of less efficient travel routes.

- excessive idle time.

- ability to identify and re-route the closest person when there is an urgent need.

- time spent at each location.

All of this information then becomes the basis for helping drivers exercise better driving habits, identify consistent habits that reduce efficiency, and even document reasons for some customer complaints. The ability to activate warning systems, for example, for bad driving habits and to communicate more efficient alternate routes is just the beginning of the value to a company of GPS vehicle tracking to a business of any size.

GPS vehicle tracking systems enable companies to know where their vehicles are, how they are being driven, where they are and for how long. When analyzed over a period of time, bad driving habits, bad routing, and many kinds of costly waste can be identified and addressed with individual drivers, resulting in increased productivity, less waste of time, fuel and money, and improved responsiveness to customers. These and other benefits derived from the data provided by the GPS vehicle tracking system reduce operating costs and increase profits and efficiencies.

With GPS vehicle tracking your company can streamline operations, increase customer satisfaction, reduce costs, and increase profits by facilitating the kinds of savings that directly and proportionately improve your bottom line. Because GPS vehicle tracking is inexpensive, you will probably see instant benefits when the devices are installed in your company vehicles.