How using telematics and fleet management technology saves you money
June 30, 2021
It’s fair to say that everyone likes to save money. A penny saved is a penny earned, as the saying goes. But what’s even better than saving money? Saving money while doing a better job at the same time. Whether that’s by cutting down wait times for your customers, or by having less of an impact on the environment, saving money while lifting performance is a great goal to have in your organization.
Telematics and fleet management technology provide a number of ways that you can save money and increase performance within your organization. Let’s take a closer look at a few of them -
Maintenance scheduling and preventive maintenance
By using data from checklists and sensors you can identify maintenance trends from your vehicles and regularly schedule maintenance for them, reducing the chance of costly and unsafe roadside breakdowns.
DVIR
Driver Vehicle Inspection Reports (DVIR) are digital checklists that make it simple to manage the maintenance of your fleet. Drivers can use them to perform pre- and post-trip checks on their vehicles, and any issues that arise are flagged and sent in real-time to your maintenance team. Mechanics can then log in to the system and see what repairs are required to be done.
Hydraulic temperature monitoring sensors
These are sensors that monitor the temperature, pressure, and fluid contamination of the hydraulics on concrete mixers, allowing for preventative maintenance. By monitoring the temperature trends of your hydraulics, you can see when maintenance is required before issues arise. Preventive maintenance means you can keep your trucks on the road for longer, saving money and avoiding hazard prone break down situations.
Monitoring Harsh Driving Events
Harsh events, such as heavy braking, rapid acceleration and speeding have harmful effects on the mechanical health of your vehicles, wearing them down over time and increasing maintenance costs. Examples of this include harsh braking which wears down brake pads faster and can cause front-end alignment issues and harsh cornering which can affect your trucks’ stability systems.
In-cab dashcams help to reduce harsh events by allowing you to review driver behavior and assess where further training and coaching is needed, reducing the chances of these events happening again and keeping your vehicles in good mechanical health.
Driver Scoring is another way that cameras can be used to reduce the number of harsh events on your vehicles. By allocating points to different harsh events, you create a gamification system where drivers are rewarded for the lowest total score. This has the added benefits of increasing staff morale and letting you see which areas certain drivers need extra coaching all the while saving you money in maintenance costs.
Waste less
Depending on what you are carrying, telematics can help ensure your loads get to their destination on time, safely and correct to specifications. Whether you’ve got food, medicine, or concrete on board this means less wasted loads and saving more money. It also helps to keep your good reputation intact, keeping business coming your way in the future.
Reefer tracking
Get total visibility into your refrigerated loads using a reefer tracking system. Real-time, accurate temperature readings into your loads combined with two-way controls for a range of functions including reefer on/off, return air, set point as well as door alerts and event notifications means that you will get your loads to your clients, on time and safe every time.
E-tickets for construction
More than just an electronic replica of a paper job ticket, an e-ticket contains all the real time job information required by drivers to get the job done properly such as navigation, slump, sensor data, and communication options. This means that there is less chance of concrete jobs going wrong, and expensive wasted loads.
Hydraulic Pressure Sensors
A sensor for mixer trucks that measures the level of resistance of the drum turning giving insight into the viscosity of the material inside the drum. Accurately load your trucks with the correct grade mix and reduce wasted loads.
Dashcams reduce fraudulent insurance claims
Video recordings that provide a clear, accurate history of driving events work to protect your drivers, your company, and your reputation. Importantly, these recordings will provide an accurate representation of what really happened in an incident and protect your business from any fraudulent insurance claims.
Recordings can be viewed on-screen together with information such as speed, left or right turning, brakes applied, G-forces, location, and more. This provides a clear picture of what really happened and allows you to take exonerate drivers and take appropriate action to reduce the risk of such events happening again.
Navigation and route optimization
By taking the most efficient routes to a destination, you are not only saving your drivers time (and money) but also cutting down on fuel costs. Even the slightest route optimization will save a significant amount of fuel over a long period of time. Telematics provide drivers with on screen navigation on their in-cab tablets, as well as automatic route optimization.
Using advanced geofencing also allows you to see how long drivers are spending in locations like worksites or depots and make informed decisions to improve these efficiencies going forward.
Idling and Idle Reports
Idling trucks use a lot of unnecessary fuel. Monitoring idling through GPS tracking and Idle Reports allows managers to see how much time your trucks are spending idling. Decisions can then be made on how to reduce the amount of time spent, saving on fuel costs, as well as helping with long-term maintenance costs.
To find out more about how you can save money for your organization using Coretex’s fleet management solutions, get in touch today.