Vehicle Telematics Takes the Labor Out of Fleet Management
Many people call Rhino Fleet Tracking wanting to save on fuel costs. This was of grave concern in 2008 when diesel prices were over $4.75 per gallon on a national average. The vast majority of our customers do see fuel savings which more than pay for the cost of the GPS tracking devices and service, however, I am always amazed by the labor savings our customers achieve.
I was able to speak with the CPA for a customer in Texas a few days ago. His company does very specialized work which takes their crews throughout Texas and the surrounding states.
Vehicle telematics for their fleet was a natural just to know where their vehicles are traveling. But, their benefits from GPS tracking on their trucks have gone much further. The cost of a single employee for an hour is over $40. Consider that a truck might have up to 3 employees.
The challenge to this company is that they pay from the start of work at the first site, to the end of work at the last site. With their trucks and crews sometimes hundreds of miles away, supervision, without fleet tracking, is near impossible. They tried getting their crews to call in on their cell phones when they left the job site. The problem with the cell phones is that it required an employee to call in at a specific time. Of course, accuracy was a little suspect.
So, when they turned to GPS tracking for their trucks, they began to find some disturbing things with their routes and labor.
The routes their vehicles were traveling showed places where fuel was being wasted due to indirect paths. What was more disturbing was their labor costs. Vehicle telematics showed when trucks and crews truly arrived and left jobs.
Because of the fleet vehicle management system they now had available, the payroll department was able to verify time sheets.
The most glaring discovery was a crew who had reported an excess of 60 labor hours. That’s a cost of over $2,400 in a month! Obviously their fleet tracking solution does not cost anywhere near as much as that single crew was taking from the company.
Consider this, if that crew committed the same act for a year, without the supervision afforded by truck tracking and monitoring, the cost to the company in wasted labor would exceed $28,800.
So, fuel savings through vehicle telematics are legitimate and real, but every fleet manager and business owner should consider the cost savings in labor that can be attributed to a solid fleet management program.
It’s supervision, not spying.
Steven Van Ooyen, CEO of Rhino Fleet Tracking
