According to the 4th Quarter 2012 Business Expectations Survey, carriers will continue to be very conservative in replacing their fleet equipment over the next year. There is an increase in carriers planning to acquire 11% to 25% of their tractor fleets, 60% of the smaller carriers and 45% of larger carriers indicated they were going […]
Choosing a GPS vehicle tracking system can be challenging. There are dozens of products on the market with a very broad range of features. This article will help you determine which features your business really needs. It will also tell you what you should look for when researching options of a fleet GPS system.
Vehicle tracking is one of the fastest growing markets for GPS technology. Companies of all sizes are taking advantage of modern GPS devices. If you have more than one company vehicle, you have a fleet – and GPS fleet tracking saves businesses money!
The ability to track vehicles at all times can significantly reduce your business operating costs. To ensure your company is operating at maximum efficiency, necessary costs such as fuel and employee overtime can be closely monitored and verified by a GPS fleet management system. For example, excessive vehicle idling not only uses excess fuel, but it also causes unnecessary vehicle wear and tear, and produces harmful greenhouse gas emissions. By effectively utilizing the data and reports produced by a real-time vehicle fleet tracking system, fuel costs can be drastically reduced by over 20 percent.
If your company has more than two vehicles, you have a fleet. As with all components of a business, fleets need managing. Fleet management ensures that overall transportation costs are kept to a minimum. Fleet management is a challenging job and is much more than just knowing where drivers and vehicles are or occasionally checking the oil levels in the fleet vans. With the assistance of modern technology such as GPS devices and vehicle tracking systems, a fleet manager’s job can be much easier.
One of the most fundamental components in fleet management is vehicle tracking. Modern technology in the form of GPS tracking devices has made tracking and diagnostics much more efficient and easier, leading to far more efficient fleet management overall. GPS vehicle tracking systems allow a fleet manager to know exactly where every vehicle in the fleet is at any given time and gives them the opportunity to plan the most efficient routes and reduce waiting time for customers.
An important part of fleet management is duty of care. Fleet management should provide clear policies and guidance for employees who drive on company business. Vehicle tracking systems incorporate software that can build up a profile of a driver’s habits, enabling fleet managers to monitor behavior on the road so you can see exactly how safely company vehicles are being driven.
Real-time GPS vehicle tracking systems can help you to be a better fleet manager. With a Real-time GPS Vehicle Tracking System, you always know the fastest and cheapest way to get Driver A to Point B. You don’t have to spend valuable time guessing, the system knows where your fleet vehicles are located. It gives you the knowledge fleet managers to need to make the BEST Fleet Management Decisions.
Real-time GPS vehicle tracking systems keep fleet operations lean and GREEN. The best GPS fleet tracking systems use telematics technology to increase daily fleet deliveries and stops, dramatically reduce overtime costs, improve driver safety, and cut fuel costs. Plus it’s better for the environment.
According to the latest ruling out of the Ninth Circuit Court, it’s perfectly legal for state, local, or federal agents to secretly plant a GPS tracking system on your car in the middle of the night, even if it’s parked in your driveway, and then use said GPS vehicle tracking system to track your movements as they see fit. BAscially the ruling says that federal agents can secretly install a GPS vehicle tracking device into your car without a warrant – and this doesn’t violate a citizen’s Fourth Amendment rights.
The ruling, which sets precedent for Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington, holds that “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures” doesn’t apply to driveways. But the Ninth Circuit doesn’t make precedent for the whole country, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia recently ruled that extended tracking via GPS requires a warrant. But, since conflicting precedent has now been set on the West Coast, this issue is bound for the Supreme Court.
In the case, DEA agents secretly planted a GPS vehicle tracking system on Juan Pineda-Moreno’s Jeep at night while it was parked outside his home, and then used it to pinpoint the illegal marijuana crop he was cultivating. Pineda-Moreno appealed the case on the grounds that the secret GPS tracking violated his Fourth Amendment rights, but a three-judge panel denied his appeal in January and a larger panel ruled this month against reconsidering the case.
A 20-year-old college student in California recently found a GPS vehicle tracking device belonging to the FBI that had been secretly attached to his car. The FBI even showed up to his apartment a few days later and took the GPS tracking device back!
The student, Yasir Afifi, had taken his car in for a routine oil change when he and the oil change technician noticed wires hanging from a black box underneath his car. Neither one of the men knew what the device exactly was, so they immediately removed it from the vehicle.
Shortly after, not knowing exactly what the black box was or who had put it there, a friend of Afifi’s posted images of the GPS tracking device online. Next thing you know, about 48 hours later, 6 FBI agents showed up at Afifi’s apartment in Santa Clara, California, demanding that he immediately returned the GPS vehicle tracking device. The GPS tracking device was identified as a police-issue-only Cobham Orion Guardian ST82 vehicle tracking system.
GPS vehicle tracking system just launched by the Chrysler Group will likely be the company’s first step toward establishing a competitor for GM’s OnStar and Ford’s SYNC systems. The new system is a Mopar-branded Electronic Vehicle Tracking System.
Chryler’s new Electronic Vehicle Tracking System offers different levels of service. The basic plan is aimed primarily at protecting owners from vehicle theft. Using GPS fleet tracking technology from Guidepoint Systems, the Mopar device includes a GPS integrated stolen vehicle tracker that can provide real-time information on the vehicle’s location and includes a $1,000 “theft-protection” warranty from Chrysler. The good news is the basic level Electronic Vehicle Tracking Systems do not require a subscription fee. This is useful to customers who want to avoid the hassle of ongoing fees while still taking advantage of the GPS stolen vehicle tracking system capabilities.
GPS fleet tracking systems can increase the profitability and productivity of any company, especially those with mobile employees or vehicles. How would you like to increase your small business’ bottom line by over 7 percent while improving service and tightening your performance? Whether you have a fleet of one or one thousand, GPS fleet tracking devices are a rock solid investment. GPS fleet tracking requires only a small initial outlay that will increase the productivity of your business in a huge way. Real-time GPS systems using industry leading telematics technology can save businesses thousands of dollars per yer per vehicle. GPS fleet tracking lets you become the master controller, with dynamic updates on where your investment is going at any time.
GPS fleet tracking systems can increase profitability by:
A green fleet of taxi cabs is expected to develop in Salt Lake City.A recently proposed Salt Lake City ordinance will make the city’s Taxi Cab fleets lean, clean and “green.” The taxi cabs will be installed with GPS fleet tracking systems and will follow specific airport and evening schedules. The city has been working to improve its taxi cab fleet management issues for more than five years.
The proposed ordinance will be discussed further in September. The ordinance will place all city taxi vehicles under the authority of the Salt Lake City International Airport. “At any one time, we have 50 taxis that we know of, just sitting at the airport, waiting two, three or four hours for a fare,” says Salt Lake City Council Chair J.T. Martin. “We have enough taxis. We just don’t have them in the right place at the right time.”
Installing a fleet GPS management system is expected to enhance the city’s ability to optimize the city’s taxi cab drivers and vehicles. The city plans to develop green, eco-friendly operating and ADA compliant vehicle standards under the new ordinance. The fleet GPS management system will enable dispatchers to send out the nearest vehicle which will improve customer service, reduce fuel costs and vehicle emissions and ultimately put more money in taxi driver’s pockets.
When Interwest Construction Inc. wanted to catch the thieves that had stolen one of their trucks before they stripped it, they activated the fleet vehicle’s GPS tracking system and the chase was on. FieldLogix, an industry leading GPS vehicle tracking device and green fleet management system, was successfully utilized to recover the missing fleet vehicle in just a few hours.
According to Kristal Wagner of Interwest Construction, Inc., “We had a truck stolen on Monday during the night. Tuesday morning, when the foreman was panicking & calling the sheriff, I used the the real-time GPS tracking device to pull up the vehicle’s exact location and gave the Sheriff the information. We recovered the truck within a couple of hours. Some small items that weren’t valuable were stolen from the truck, but the vehicle was not harmed at all!”
GPS fleet tracking systems are recommended to all drivers by the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB) to prevent motor vehicle theft. According to NICB, a car is stolen every 26 seconds in America. Nearly half of these are never recovered, and are commonly scrapped for parts or smuggled to another country. NICB’s vehicle protection approach recommends four layers of security based on the risk factors pertaining to a specific vehicle. Vehicle Tracking Systems are one such layer, and are described by the NICB as “very effective” in helping police recover stolen vehicles. Vehicle GPS tracking systems are an important and integrated part of the “layered approach” to protecting fleet vehicles.
GPS vehicle tracking systems are a worthwhile investment for many fleets. Here’s a few reasons why fleets like using fleet GPS tracking systems:
1. Fleet tracking systems reduce business operating costs and increase fleet safety by targeting poor drivers that speed excessively, resulting in wasted fuel, excessive engine wear, drive up insurance rates and cause accidents.
2. Many fleet managers like using the system’s automatic mileage reminder to reduce downtime and enhances vehicle resale values by encouraging scheduled, preventative maintenance. Vehicle tracking systems can remind you when it’s time to rotate tires, change oil or perform other scheduled maintenance. Conversely, fleet management systems also can tell you if a vehicle is not in need of scheduled service which helps keep maintenance costs under control.
GPS vehicle tracking devices are a popular tool for thousands of business owners. Fleets with only one vehicle all the way to original equipment manufacturers like Ford, GM or John Deere are including GPS tracking devices in their vehicles. GPS tracking software is most frequently used by businesses in the service, transportation and manufacturing industries. Companies with fleets of one to to fleets of 10,000, such as FedEx, rely upon their tracking systems to improve their profitability.
Fleet GPS tracking data combined with tax software can ensure private fleet operators in the US that you aren’t overpaying on your International Fuel Tax Agreement (IFTA) taxes. For most fleet managers, calculating IFTA taxes is a tedious but necessary administrative task. The good news is that this process can be automated if a fleet manager uses GPS tracking/telematics devices in its trucks, along with fuel cards and IFTA tax reporting software (or a tax service professional that uses this kind of software). Then the mileage driven in each state and fuel expenses for each vehicle can be automatically uploaded into the software and the proper IFTA paperwork can be printed out.
Using a GPS Tracking System combined with proper tax software can make this process much more manageable and less labor intensive. If you have a large fleet of over 50 vehicles, then there is a good chance you have an employee whose only job is to handle this paper-intensive task. If you are paying an administrator say $38,000 year to manage this process, investing in a Fleet GPS Tracking System is a no-brainer. While a fleet operator would probably never buy a telematics solution solely to eliminate an administrative position, it can contribute to the ROI offered by fleet telematics solutions.
Since truckers typically operate across state lines they often need to calculate their usage in various locations. GPS position reports are a good way to do this as not only would it report your GPS location but it would also report the exact time for each position report. Ideally, you could automate this process with reporting transmitted in real-time as you go.
GPS fleet management systems are designed with one primary goal: to save business managers time and money. There many benefits to using a fleet GPS management system. Here is a list of the top 10 reasons.
1. Increased Profits and Performance
Access to vehicle efficiency and driver productivity data helps a company manage the costs related to fleet operations. There can be a significant reduction in employee overtime costs and driver down-time; reduced maintenance costs directly affect the bottom line. Plus improved route efficiency and fleet metrics allow for expanding customer base. GPS truck tracking saves approximately $5,484 per employee annually.
2. Improved Fleet Operations
GPS tracking systems enable real-time decision making plus enhanced accountability of drivers and assets. Fleet managers will no longer have to rely on driver log sheets, service forms and truck maintenance records to keep track of fleet vehicle operations. Instant access to vehicle efficiency and driver productivity data can help a company better manage the costs related to fleet operations. GPS vehicle tracking allows companies to add more jobs to each work day. Companies typically see a 25% increase in work orders completed after implementing a GPS tracking device.
3. Reduced Fuel Costs and CO2 Emissions
Poor driving behavior such as speeding and unnecessary idling wastes fuel and can be identified with a GPS fleet tracking system. Fleet vehicles can use up to 800 gallons of fuel per year due to unnecessary idling alone, which costs approximately $2400 per vehicle per year. Every unnecessary mile you eliminate will reduce your carbon footprint and can make your entire fleet more productive and environmentally responsible.
Fleet managers are constantly trying to figure out ways to increase productivity while cutting costs. The global economic recession combined with rising fuel costs has made fleet management more challenging than ever. With fuel topping $3 a gallon or more in some regions, fleet operators are searching for ways to make their drivers more efficient, while also abiding by strict legal requirements that restrict vehicle idling and hours of service. Considering the current economic times, even a small decrease in costs can mean the difference between a profit or a loss for many fleet operators.
The challenges facing fleet managers are becoming increasingly difficult. A fleet tracking system that lowers operating costs can help many companies to not only survive but thrive in today’s tough economic climate. A fleet tracking system can provide a return on investment in approximately four to nine months, depending on your industry. Modern fleet tracking and management systems are making it possible for managers to reduce fuel consumption and vehicle emissions, while simultaneously improving safety and legal compliance, and optimizing vehicle and driver operations. A GPS tracking system helps dispatchers to route the nearest vehicle to a specific location, navigate the best route, and minimize maintenance costs. Fleet managers can also reduce truck driver overtime and administrative costs by automating fuel costs and tax reporting with electronic truck driver reports.
Facing severe budget cuts in today’s tough economy, cutting costs without sacrificing student safety is a formidable task for every school district across the nation. School district transportation managers are responsible for thousands of children each day once they step onto the school bus. Most state laws are very strict when it comes to school […]
