Friday 18 December 2009

How GPS Vehicle Tracking Can Save Your Company A Bundle Of Money

By Todd Cavanaugh

If you have company vehicles on the road - cars, trucks, tractor trailers - and you do not have GPS vehicle tracking in them, you are probably spending money on wasted time, wasted fuel, and unnecessary vehicle maintenance and repairs. If you want to reduce these costs and improve your bottom line, GPS vehicle tracking is what you need.

Efficiency and productivity are often difficult to monitor for small business owners. Even large companies sometimes have trouble managing costs. Consider, if you will, the phenomenal success in operating cost reduction reported by UPS a few years ago when they discovered that eliminating left turns by their drivers saved time, increased fuel efficiency and saved money. The change was a result of analyzing idling time at traffic lights or waiting for traffic to clear, and it was done with data captured by GPS vehicle tracking.

The information gathered by UPS and the action taken by the company can be useful to most businesses that have vehicles on the road. GPS vehicle tracking clearly demonstrates that left turns require waiting, either for the intersection to be clear of traffic or for a light to change. While waiting, driver time is being wasted and fuel is being wasted by an idling engine. Once this information is expanded across a full day, then across the entire company, the lost time and wasted fuel translates to significant cost. This knowledge indicates left turns are expensive.

The city of Dyersburg, TN needed to find a way to cut costs for city services. Based on an educated guess, they installed GPS vehicle tracking devices in all city vehicles. After a period of data gathering from the devices, city officials were able to document such things as (1) use of city vehicles for personal business, (2) drivers who clocked more than 120 miles in a day without making a single stop - except for breaks and meals, (3) drivers who were taking vehicles out of the city, (4) drivers who were picking up a small amount of tree limbs and cuttings and immediately going to the dump before picking up the next load.

This is just one example of the waste that can be detected by GPS vehicle tracking. An amazing amount of other data is also provided to managers and company leaders:

- speeding

- bad driving habits that could harm the car or others

- failure to use the most direct route

- vehicles left running for some period of time

- finding the vehicle that is closest to an emergency and re-routing

- time spent at each location.

This and other information tracked and fed into a GPS vehicle tracking central analysis center becomes a new management tool for correcting bad habits, identifying potential problems, providing alternative options, and becoming more responsive to customer needs and frustrations. It also offers the ability to provide warning systems, to notify drivers of traffic problems and identify alternate routes. The information provided to a company by a GPS vehicle tracking system can be of infinite value to any business with any kind of vehicles on the road.

GPS vehicle tracking systems can help you protect and extend the life of your vehicles by helping drivers exercise safer and more efficient driving habits. When data from the tracking devices is analyzed over time, it will identify waste, lax employee performance, unauthorized use of vehicles, and identify numerous ways to become more efficient. These are only a few of the ways a GPS vehicle tracking system can provide the benefits of consistent and trustworthy data that can help you cut costs, increase efficiency and productivity, and increase profits.

Your drivers can find the best driving routes, reduce waiting time, improve fuel economy and contribute to a better bottom line. GPS devices are very affordable and very easy to install and monitor. Many insurance companies even offer rate reductions for vehicles equipped with GPS vehicle tracking. Perhaps best of all, the ROI of this investment will be many times greater than the cost and you can demonstrate improvement almost instantly.

About the Author:

No comments: