Kenneth Caldwell, the firm’s fleet manager, has had an overall positive experience with Fleetmatics thus far. “When the system was first implemented, it was great to be able to organise everyone more efficiently. The system is easy to use and at a glance, all vehicles can be located and analysed.”

Caldwell has also been impressed with the Live Fleet feature of the system. “The ‘Live Fleet’ dashboard on the system is great, it allows me to see all the drivers en route and it gives me an in-depth report on each vehicle and presents it in a useful and digestible way.”

The Fleetmatics solution allows Caldwell to be a better fleet manager. By knowing all vehicle locations, he feels secure that all of the company’s assets are looked after. The system also provides proof of service for all the drivers should any customer disputes arise.

Caldwell has also noticed considerable fuel savings since installing the vehicle tracking system on the company’s 44 vehicles. “It is difficult to calculate exactly how much we have saved on fuel due to the ever increasing price of it but, despite inflation, the fuel bills have decreased,” Caldwell says.

Read Hugh Scott & Company’s Full Case Study

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Finlay is Managing Director at Corecut Ltd, one of the UK’s principal suppliers of diamond drilling, sawing, and controlled demolition services. Corecut has 38 vehicles tracked with Fleetmatics, and you may have heard them feature on our radio advert. Corecut is a specialised diamond drilling company based out of Broxburn, West Lothian, Scotland. Since implementing Fleetmatics, the company has increased productivity and added more jobs per day.

The only representative from the UK, Finlay completed the 60 minute race on the infamous 14 mile circuit and is currently third in the Masters Cup.

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Jo Haugh, Office Manager at NBC Bird& Pest Solutions (Scotland), was concerned with keeping track of all of the drivers across the country. “Our bird and pest control technicians are out in the field all over Scotland and, before installing Fleetmatics, it was difficult for us to keep track of where everyone was and for how long they had been on site,” she explained.

The company has become a fan of the Time Card aspect of fleet management. Before implementing the Fleetmatics system, Haugh relied on manual and sometimes inaccurate time sheets. Now, she knows exactly when an employee starts work, how long they take for breaks, and when they end the day. “At the end of the month, we now run a month end report and marry it up with the time sheet to check the number of hours on site for each client,” she says. “This allows us to calculate the exact number of hours worked by each employee.”

Read the Full Case Study

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Here are some of the ways that Fleetmatics can help to keep your fleet more secure:

1. Driver ID

The Driver ID feature allows you to make sure that only authorised drivers are using your vehicles. A unique key fob is assigned to each driver: if it isn’t presented to the key fob reader at the start of each journey,* an alarm will sound. The only way to disable the alarm is to present the key fob or turn off the vehicle, meaning you can be sure that only your drivers are using your vehicles.

2. GPS Monitoring

Fleetmatics is a GPS based vehicle tracking system. You can use Fleetmatics from any internet enabled PC or on your mobile phone via the Fleetmatics app. So, wherever you are, you can monitor the location of your vehicles and make sure they are in the right place and being driven by the right person.

3. Hidden Device

The Fleetmatics tracking device is smaller than most mobile phones. We install them out of sight, in a difficult to access location, and there are no external antennas. This means that, unless you choose to advertise the presence of the device, would- be thieves will have no idea that your vehicles are being tracked. Alternatively, by letting people know your vehicles are tracked, you might put people off trying to steal your vehicles in the first place.

4. Alerts

Using the Fleetmatics web-based software, you can create a wide variety of alerts, which can be emailed directly to you. An ‘Out of Hours’ alert, for example, could be set to let you know if your vehicles are ever switched on outside of work hours. This means you’re able to alert the police as soon as your vehicle starts moving.

5. Customer Care

Our Customer Care Team is experienced at helping with the retrieval of lost or stolen vehicles. They have helped police to track vehicles in real-time as they are being driven away from the crime scene, as well as locating vehicles that have been taken and later abandoned. Whatever the problem, if your vehicle is tracked by Fleetmatics, you can rely on our Customer Care team to help.

The post 5 Ways Fleetmatics Can Make Your Fleet More Secure appeared first on The FleetMatics Tracker.

Electrical

Electric vehicles have actually been around since the 1890s. In fact, in 1899 an electric vehicle was the first to break the 100km/h barrier. Owners of electric vehicles enjoy significantly lower running costs, although the cost of buying them in the first place can be much higher than traditional vehicles. Although electric vehicles produce no pollutants themselves, it is worth remembering that power plants used to generate the electricity probably do so by burning fossil fuels. Currently, the biggest problem with electric vehicles is that it can take anything from twenty minutes to 24 hours to charge them.

Hydrogen Fuel Cells

Vehicles powered by fuel cells are considered by many to be the future. They are already powerful enough to be a direct replacement in any size vehicle. Boeing is even planning to use them in future aeroplanes. They produce 45% less pollution than petrol engines and can be refuelled in less than five minutes. They seem like the ideal future fuel but they are not without their faults. Currently there is no efficient way to store the cells in vehicles and, much more worryingly, they are prone to catching fire or freezing in extreme temperatures.

Compressed Air

There have been compressed air motors around since the 1920s and they work in a similar way to steam engines. The biggest advantage of compressed air as a fuel is that there is no risk of fire and no need for cooling systems. This means that the motor can be significantly cheaper than a petrol one. Unfortunately, it can take up to four hours to refuel and the compressed air tanks take up a lot of space. They are also limited by a top speed of about 100km/h and a maximum range of 80km.

Natural Gas

There are already a number of natural gas-powered vehicles on the road and it is not uncommon to see it available at fuelling stations. It produces 45% fewer pollutants than burning petrol and costs less. The really great advantage of natural gas is that existing vehicles can be converted to use it. Unfortunately, the tanks required take up a lot of space and it has yet to see wide-scale adoption.

Biodiesel

Biodiesel is probably the most exciting development in alternative fuels that I’ve come across. It is created using animal or vegetable fat and can even reuse fats that have been used for cooking. It is biodegradable, safe and produces far fewer pollutants than burning traditional petrol or diesel. Better yet, it can be used in most new diesel engines without modification. There are still some downsides, however, currently it is more expensive and less efficient than petrol or diesel and isn’t suitable for use in low temperatures, but research continues in this promising alternate fuel.

Like it or not, it seems that petrol and diesel are currently the best fuels for our vehicles. They allow high speeds, long distances and are widely available. Unfortunately, they are getting more expensive all the time and produce a lot of pollution. Fleetmatics can be a great help by allowing you to ensure your fuel is being used as efficiently as possible. We provide a number of reports that will allow you to monitor your carbon footprint, the fuel efficiency of your vehicles and even check for lost fuel. Alternative fuels might not be ready for the mainstream just yet but, while we are all waiting for them, Fleetmatics fuel card reporting can be used to ensure your fleet is run efficiently.

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Proof of Delivery

Anytime a customer complains that product was dropped off late (or early, if that’s an issue) you have complete proof to when the vehicle arrived at the location. Any sort of timing dispute can be resolved with fleet tracking.

Speeding Issues

If you believe that your driver was wrongly accused of speeding by an officer of the law, you can prove his or her innocence by pulling up the driver’s records. Fleetmatics records all speeds that your vehicles drive, so we can provide proof that your drivers did not break the law.

Liability Issues

If for some reason your employee gets involved in a legal matter while on company time, you can prove that your vehicles were or were not at the scene of the crime. Route Replay can be used to prove exactly where your vehicles were at any time.

Loading and Unloading

Some companies may incur fines for loading or unloading over a certain amount of time. With fleet management provided by Fleetmatics, your company has proof of exactly how long the loading or unloading process took.

Although it’s likely that your employees would never speed (ha!), or these legal situations would never arise, it always helps to have the peace of mind. Fleet management is a proactive approach to protecting your small or medium business against anything that can come your way.

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Fast forward a-hundred-odd years and we’ve got cars on the road capable of reaching 200 mph and beyond. Safety is now big business. We’ve had three-point seat belts since 1958 and airbags since the 70s, but with an estimated 34 million cars on UK roads, it is becoming increasingly dangerous. Fortunately, some companies are trying to make things better for us and there are some exciting technologies around the corner that promise to make our roads safer than ever.

Fleetmatics offers several technologies to make sure your fleet is driving safely. You can monitor your drivers’ behaviour via our fleet tracking system and even set alerts for things like speeding and harsh cornering. Fleetmatics is also able to catch drivers when they are excessively breaking and erratically accelerating. You can rank the drivers in your fleet according to their safety score. More importantly, Fleetmatics allows you to look for ways to improve their driving style. Here are some more examples of developments for the future of driver safety:

Skidding Airbags

Mercedes have developed an ingenious system that can more than halve the distance it takes you to stop. The vehicles on-board computer can detect whether a collision is imminent and, if it calculates that you aren’t going to stop in time, it fires the airbags. In this case the airbags are located under the vehicles front axle and allow the car to slow down at more than twenty-metres per second.

Inflating Seatbelts

Slowing down at any rate is going to be uncomfortable, as anyone who has had to slam on the brakes can attest. The answer may be even more airbags. Ford has developed inflating seatbelts that spread the force over five times as much body area as a conventional three point harness which should mean you not only walk away from a crash but that you do so without a strip of bruises across your chest.

Augmented Reality

Several manufacturers believe that technology similar to that seen in Google Glass can be used to make your driving experience safer. Using a Heads Up Display (HUD) they plan to project information onto your windscreen. It will be able to display your speed, driving directions and even upcoming hazards. By overlaying digital images onto the real world it will mean that you never have to take your eyes off the road.

Communication between Vehicles

Some of the information that ends up on your HUD may come from the other cars around you. As on-board computers become more sophisticated, manufacturers are planning to use them to record details of road conditions, hazards, temporary speed limits and anything else that might be useful. That information will then be broadcast to approaching road users to warn them what they are likely to encounter.

Night Vision

Sometimes there aren’t other vehicles around to warn us that we are approaching a hazard. Usually that seems to be when we are driving along an unlit stretch of motorway at night. At times like that I’ve often thought it would be useful to be able to see in the dark and soon, we might be able to. Mercedes has developed a system that uses thermal imaging cameras to detect objects and hazards long before they become visible to the human eye. It has a range of up to 300 metres and will begin appearing as an optional extra on vehicles as soon as this year.

All this technology is great, but it means nothing if you and your drivers are not driving safely. Until we have self-driving cars, humans are still the weak point in the system. Although it is nice to know there are technologies there to look after us in the event of an emergency, it’s better to do everything we can to avoid that emergency in the first place.

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The Managing Director, Gordon Duncan, credits Fleetmatics for the tremendous fuel savings the company has seen. “The biggest advantage I’ve noticed since installing the Fleetmatics GPS tracking system has been fuel savings, which was evident immediately.” He continues, “Thanks to the Fleetmatics ‘Live Fleet’ function I was able to monitor all employees’ driving behaviour and I’m now saving approximately £100 a week on fuel, which equates to around £4,800 off my yearly fuel bill! For a small business, I think it is just remarkable.”

The company has also realised considerable savings on fleet maintenance. Mr. Duncan has set up Fleetmatics ‘Service Alerts’ for each vehicle by calendar time, engine on time, and mileage. “With ‘Service Alerts’, I have been able to manage all my fleet maintenance needs in one place,” he explains. “This has resulted in the company saving thousands of pounds on servicing vehicles. For example the brakes, the suspension and the tyres are only half the cost of what it was prior to Fleetmatics.”

Read the Full Case Study

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1. POIs

Points of Interest give your reports meaning; they are what make the reports unique to you. It is so much easier to read a report with destination names that you recognise, as opposed to house numbers or road names.

2. Dashboards

The perfect way to digest big data at a glance. Fleetmatics stores so much information, analyses it, and presents it in a way that’s easy to read. Who are your best drivers? Who are your worst? Is everyone safe out there? What’s normal?! The dashboard has all the answers.

3. Fuel Cards

A genuine goldmine. Fuel prices are soaring; keeping an eye on who spends what, where and when, keeps you in the know.  Fleetmatics integrates with all the top fuel card providers and requires no additional hardware or installation. If you don’t already use this feature, you could be missing out on substantial savings.

4. Alerts

One of the fundamental strengths of Fleetmatics is that it is like a silent guard: you say what’s permitted, set the parameters and then sit back and relax. If anyone is idling, speeding, or driving out of hours, you’ll know about it instantly. Alerts can be set to pop up on a smartphone, email, or flag when you’re logged in. If it happens, you’ll know about it.

5. Search for Almost Anything

Did you know that if you’re in Fleetmatics Live Fleet, the search box can be used for….well, almost anything? Landmarks, vehicles, addresses – search for it and highlight it on the map. How handy.

Well, that’s my top five. Hopefully you’ve learnt a thing or two. Are there any gems that you’ve unearthed since using the system? We’d love to hear from you. For more comprehensive training, contact our support team at supportuk@fleetmatics.com

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“We chose Fleetmatics because we needed a system with comprehensive functionality,” says Mr. Crocker of the company’s choice of Fleetmatics. “Through optimising our mobile workforce, we have improved our efficiency and productivity levels vastly,” he continued.

Corecut utilized the ‘Find Nearest Vehicle’ function to streamline the job routing process. Mr. Crocker believes each vehicle has increased its productivity in several ways. “We also have Garmin integration so they get to the job site via the quickest route.”

Read the rest of the Case Study

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