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.

From your central monitoring computer, you can track the movements of every truck all day. And when you arrive in the office in the morning, you can review the movements of any trucks overnight. Have you ever thought a particular truck was racking up far more mileage than it should? Would you like to be able to prove that two of your employees are using that truck every weekend as a moving van for their moonlighting business? With mobile GPS you can track where every vehicle has been driven since installation of the system.

Have you wondered why Truck 36 seems to take longer to reach local destinations than other trucks and drivers? With mobile GPS in the truck, you can prove that the drivers are taking the longest possible route to each destination and stopping at home for a very long lunch.

Or perhaps you think several of the trucks are using too much fuel for the miles they are putting on the odometer. Mobile GPS in the truck would tell you that they are meeting in the parking lot of an empty warehouse for card games every afternoon, leaving the trucks idling so nobody will know.

Mobile GPS will certainly provide all the ammunition you need to prove that you have a few slackers on your team or that your vehicles are being used after hours by some enterprising drivers. But there are also many positive results you can achieve with this technology. For example, by monitoring routes taken by your drivers, you can help them identify more fuel-efficient or faster routes. Mobile GPS tracking will reduce fuel use and cost, reduce carbon emissions, and increase productivity of these drivers.

Instead of walking the garage at the end of each driver’s run to note mileage and make other checks of the vehicle, you can automate the data gathering with a mobile GPS system. Then you can use that time to analyze the information and still get home in time for supper. As you analyze the information the mobile GPS system will gather about your vehicles and your drivers you will be able to reduce costs, improve driving safety and fuel-efficient driving habits, improve productivity, improve customer satisfaction, maintain vehicles more efficiently, extend the life of vehicles, and protect your drivers and your vehicles from theft and other dangers.

Consider, also, this very different benefit of a mobile GPS system in your fleet. At 10 am, you notice that the truck 12 is sitting on the side of the Interstate, but shows no indication of a vehicle problem. You assume the driver has pulled over to check something. You continue to monitor, noting that the truck has not moved at 11:30. You try to call your driver and he does not answer the phone. You continue to monitor and call until noon. By this time, you are concerned. Using your mobile GPS tracking system, you locate a truck returning to the garage that is about 10 miles beyond the location of truck 12. You call the driver and ask her to stop and check on truck 12. You continue to monitor the arrival of truck 16. Within a minute you receive a phone call from the driver of truck 16 informing you that the driver of truck 12 is in bad shape and appears to have suffered a stroke. She has called 911 and will accompany the driver of truck 12 to the hospital and remain there until his family arrives. You then call the driver’s wife, and take a van to deliver another driver to complete the run for truck 12, pick up the driver of truck 16 and take her back to her truck (unless she followed the ambulance with it), and return to the hospital to wait with the driver’s wife. Mobile GPS saves a life and keeps a delivery on schedule.

Mobile GPS in every vehicle in the fleet can save money, save time, increase productivity, reduce fuel usage and carbon emissions, reduce your management time, protect your vehicles, and even save the life of a driver. All things considered, don’t you need mobile GPS for your fleet?