Businesses are always looking for ways to keep their drivers safe, improve efficiency and optimize operations in an increasingly competitive fleet industry. Fleet managers are leveraging different solutions to help them do this, including telematics. Telematics helps managers collect fleet information and send it somewhere else for storage or analysis. Telematics systems collect different types of data including locations, onboard diagnostics, driver behavior, and many others. In this article, we will discuss the benefits these systems offer to fleets of all sizes.
Fleet Maintenance
Planned and unplanned maintenance are both important for fleets and telematics helps with both. By tracking how a vehicle is performing and behaving, a telematics system can schedule maintenance such that downtime has the least impact on productivity.
These systems also allow managers to do proactive vehicle health tracking. By tracking metrics like oil temperature, tire pressure, and fluid levels, they can help the manager schedule regular maintenance before things get a lot worse.
By diagnosing and dealing with potential issues earlier, businesses can save themselves from costly maintenance.
Improving Safety
Every manager should ensure their fleet is operating as safely as possible. The measures they put in place can help protect their drivers and vehicles while also protecting the business from potential liability.
Fleet managers can, for example, use telematics to record unsafe driving habits. Speeding, distracted driving, making sudden stops and other behaviors can all be captured and sent to a manager. The manager can then review them and talk to their drivers to correct them.
Capturing the road and cabin to record the incidents above is now possible using video telematics enabled by connected dashcams. Surfsight, for example, lets fleet managers record the cabin and road simultaneously, storing the videos on the cloud for review later.
By correcting these issues earlier, fleet managers can reduce the risk of accidents.
Enhancing Efficiency
The trucking industry is fierce and so businesses have to take advantage of every edge they get. Operational efficiency and optimization are therefore essential in this industry. Both go hand in hand with reducing costs which is also essential in this industry.
Telematics that help track driver behavior can help a business correct driving habits that lead to inefficient fuel use, which costs the business money. The same goes for route optimization where the business can find the shortest and most efficient routes to save time, fuel, money, and labor costs.
Route optimization reduces the amount of time drivers spend in traffic. This ensures goods are delivered on time or even before that which leads to improved customer satisfaction and can translate to improved sales down the road.
Payroll Management Automation
Telematics can be a huge help for fleet businesses that pay their drivers depending on how far or how long they have driven. All the data for how long and how far a driver has driven is recorded as they work. The only thing remaining is to multiply that with their rate, add any benefits or additional payments, therefore you do not have to do much administrative work.
Any fleet business that is not using telematics is leaving money on the table, potentially keeping its drivers unsafe and being left behind by its competitors. The benefits discussed above should convince all businesses that own fleets to start using telematics today.
Sally Giles ran her own importing business for many years. She’s now living the dream as a freelance writer, walking her dogs through the forest most days.
