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Solving Speeding, Idling, and More with Vehicle Trackers

Going Beyond Dots on a Map

Searching for a GPS Tracking Solution?

I’m going to tell you something I probably shouldn’t.

GPS Insight may not be the best fit for you if price is your only concern when it comes to vehicle trackers.

We understand that some businesses only require “dots on a map” for basic location intelligence on their vehicles and as a theft deterrent.

And that’s okay!

But what if your business needs to cut costs by 20% and you’re unsure of where to start? Without vehicle trackers in place, it is difficult to determine where unnecessary costs are coming from and how to curb them. For example, it is difficult to know if vehicles are wasting fuel on long idle stops or speeding around town without tickets.

It would also be impossible to alleviate these pains with a GPS tracking solution that

doesn’t provide advanced analytics.

To receive true fleet intelligence and solve your business challenges, you need a system that goes beyond just dots on a map.

Let’s take a look at a few examples of why you might need vehicle trackers implemented into your workflow.

The Truth About Fuel Costs

Cutting fuel costs is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) reasons businesses look for vehicle trackers. The reason fuel costs are high and need to be cut in the first place can come from a host of reasons and sometimes because of a few of them. Speeding, inefficient dispatching or routing, and drivers taking “the long way” to destinations are only a few of these reasons.

The most common reason many businesses discover through the use of vehicle trackers is idling. There are times where idling is acceptable. If you’re in a hot climate like we are in Arizona, it’s understandable that fleet managers would be okay with the drivers turning and leaving the vehicle on for a period of time to stay cool, or vice versa in a cold environment to stay warm.

But often times what fleet managers learn is that vehicles are left idling for 30, 40, even 50 minutes plus. Nothing wastes fuel more than idling does, so even cutting down by 20% would be a huge step in the direction of cutting fuel costs by 20%.

The way for vehicle trackers to help you with this is by setting alerts for idling and getting notified in real time when this is taking place. Some fleet managers like to have the alert come right to them so that they can take appropriate action while others like to give the driver a chance to self-correct and send the alert to them first.

Location Intelligence

Going beyond dots on a map means using vehicle trackers for more than only knowing where your vehicles are at all times. It means using the intelligence you have to improve your business, whether that’s through decreasing risk (by decreasing speeding), or improving productivity or efficiency. There are many reasons that productivity and efficiency could be down for a fleet such as drivers taking long lunch breaks, taking the “scenic route” to jobs, and/or long loading times in the morning.

One way of going beyond dots on a map to solve these problems is more accurately dispatching vehicles. If you are a fleet feeling the pains of sending a driver way across town without knowing if there’s someone closer, or a vehicle that’s more equipped of completing that job, using vehicle trackers will alleviate this for you. Being able to see which vehicle is closest to a potential rush order and/or job could potentially help cut down fuel costs that are being wasted by blindly sending vehicles on jobs.

There are obvious ways that having this new location intelligence will improve operations. If you’re a company that has a dispatcher who takes a lot of time out of their day to make calls or uses radio to find out where drivers are throughout the day, knowing where they are en route will cut that from their workflow. More importantly, this will allow them to improve ETAs with your customers which will, in turn, increase your customer service satisfaction with your clientele.

You Get What You Pay For

I’m usually not a fan of cliches, but the old “you get what you pay for” is no cliche when it comes to vehicle trackers; it’s a fact. The cheapest solution doesn’t always mean that it is the best fit for your fleet and what you’re trying to accomplish. There are things to consider before committing to a vehicle tracking solution.

 

 

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