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?

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?