Vehicle Telematics: Fleet Voice
April 15, 2009: Fleet Voice Column
There are many aspects of managing a fleet of vehicles from vehicle financing, vehicle maintenance, vehicle telematics (tracking and diagnostics), driver management, fuel management and health & safety management.
In this weeks Fleet Voice, we are going to take a look at vehicle telematics as it can be one of the most cost efficient but it can be for some employees one of the most controversial a fleet manager has at his/her disposal.
One of the best ways of keeping costs low is to use a GPS vehicle tracker. But your company should not introduce this measure as a ‘big brother’ mechanism to watch over the drivers. No, you must have meetings with your drivers and tell them why the system is being fitted to their cars. Employees should adapt quickly to the kits especially if you offer an incentive of say ‘the most frugal driver of the month award’. Your drivers will respect you and the GPS more if they are being offered something in return.
Employees and staff need to get their heads around the idea of using vehicle tracking technology, if your company does not use one of these systems, it could be losing thousands of pounds each year in fuel costs. With the current economic climate, all companies are looking at ways to ease their outlays and vehicle tracking is certainly one of the options. As we are in mid-downturn, employees are putting more value on their jobs, being supervised by a tracking device may just become a way of life. At the end of the day, vehicle tracking technology is essentially just another management tool to help the fleet manager better run the business.
GPS systems can also be actively used to resolve customer disputes related to arrival time, service duration and service location. Drivers in the right who are getting blamed for being late will appreciate you and the kit as it will prove that they were on time.
When the fleet manager knows the exact location of a vehicle, they can pinpoint it on a map. If that vehicle is lost or needs to be sent to another delivery then it can be done so in seconds. This means that the fleet manager is in total control of all the vehicles on his/her fleet, helping the drivers stay on schedule and not have to speed or work over time to recover lost time.
Another key requirement for a fleet manager is to make sure that the company is abiding by the 2008 Corporate Manslaughter Act. Sticking on the right side of the law can be aided through vehicle telematics.
This Duty of Care to all personnel within a company was strengthened to target company directors as well as their drivers in cases of road deaths involving vehicles used on business.
The Police have claimed they now treat every road death as ‘an unlawful killing’ and have the power to seize company records and computers during their investigations.
Therefore it is vital that the fleet manager has a complete overview of where and what the drivers on the companies fleet are doing. This could mean that a company may have to ditch paying mileage for private vehicles as these cars are harder to control. Usually the owner will not want a tracking kit on his/her private car but the fleet manager may have to persuade that this action happens, as privately owned vehicles used for business journeys are treated exactly the same as company owned vehicles.
It is vital that every company has a ‘Driving at Work’ policy in place covering every element of their business vehicle operation, no matter how few vehicles are involved and who owns them. Therefore using a vehicle telematics system could be a vital part of the ‘Driving at Work’ policy at your company.
The telematics system could also monitor the speed of your drivers, any found speeding could be warned by the company, and in turn this would improve fuel consumption, maintenance and accidents. Analysts have worked out that this could save up to 20 per cent on your monthly fuel bill. The additional benefit of reducing speed is that your drivers may well keep their licenses for a while longer and you can reduce your insurance liability.
So even though some in your company may view vehicle telematics as a ‘Big Brother’ watching their every move, the real deal is that it could save your firm thousands of pounds and improve the moral of drivers by being helped rather than hindered.
Simon McBride
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