Ways Telematics Solutions can improve your Fleet
If your fleet isn’t as efficient as it should or needs to be, Telematics solutions will fundamentally change how your fleet operates.
Installing telematics devices in your fleet vehicles has a domino effect. By changing the way your vehicles are being driven, it concurrently saves you time and money.
Telematics offer a transparent and holistic view of fleet activity. This in turn gives fleet managers greater data and more control.
How Can It Cut Fuel Expenditure?
Fuel expenditure is one of the biggest outgoings when running a fleet. A study in 2019 found that fuel costs made up 60% of a fleet’s budget. How your fleet is driving can have an impact on this.
Erratic driving behaviours overwork your engine and can eat into your fuel usage.
- Harsh Braking
- Corner Speeding
- Over Acceleration
- Excessive Idling
These are all things that will put extra strain on your engine and stop it from working at optimum levels. This means that it’s using more fuel to keep up with how the vehicle is being driven. It can also accelerate the rate that an engine will usually wear and tear. This will cost more in the long run in vehicle repairs.
Eliminating these behaviours from your fleet can cut down on fuel costs.
What are the Practical Changes to Fleet Operations?
Gamification
Rating a drivers performance improves MPG by 25%. Our telematics devices use a cutting edge ranking system to assess how your fleet is being driven. This data is then sent to the fleet operator to see where your fleet needs improving. It is also displayed to the drivers, showing them where they sit compared to other drivers. This allows you to offer
incentives to your best drivers and instil safer driving practices across your fleet.
This can help improve your fleets road safety and fuel efficiency. Gamifying drivers behaviour and encouraging safer driving can also increase your employee satisfaction levels. This helps with employee retention and builds a happier workforce.
Route Optimisation
Route optimisation is proven to cut total fleet mileage by up to 20%. Taking the best possible route could save your fleet time on their journeys and fuel in their tank. Our telematics devices link to live traffic data. This assesses your fleet journey in real-time and sets them on the most optimal route. By avoiding congested areas, drivers can get to their destinations quicker. This helps your team become more efficient by utilising their time. It can also help you improve your customer service by giving more accurate arrival times.
Keeping your fleet on the road and running as effectively as possible could be the key to your businesses success.
In-Vehicle Coaching
Our Trakm8 RH600 gives drivers real-time nudges to drivers to help them avoid the type of high-risk and fuel-burning behaviours outlined above. Lightbars are placed on dashboards and change between green and red to indicate good or bad behaviours. This system constantly reinforces good driving.
Engine Idling
Telematics devices will register when your car is not moving and your engine is left on. For every 10 minutes of idling, a vehicle with a 3-litre engine burns 300ml of fuel, while one with a 5-litre engine will burn 500ml of fuel over the same period. When factored over an entire fleet, you could be looking at a huge amount of wasted fuel. Idling just doesn’t have cost implications but emissions also contribute pollution levels and is a finable offence.
Minimising Fuel Theft
The ability to connect the vehicles CPU gives fleet managers a wide array of data. This includes fuel tank levels. Custom alerts will notify managers of sudden level drops which indicates theft. And also when and where it occurred.
Vehicle Cameras
Vehicle cameras are primarily used to:
- prevent “crash for cash” fraud
- reduce road risk
- determine legal fault when a collision occurs
However, research has shown that when drivers think that they are being watched they tend to adopt a more sensible, risk-averse driving style.
A safer driving style is often a smoother and more fuel efficient driving style, helping again to boost MPG.
The RH600 telematics device combines vehicle tracking and driver behaviour with a dual lens cameras. While the first lens monitors the road ahead, the second lens monitors the driver.
The best telematics cameras have remote live-streaming capabilities, meaning the transport or fleet manager can conduct spot checks any driver, at any time.
Tyre Pressure
CAN bus connectivity can now also provide data from a vehicle’s tyre pressure monitoring system (TPMS).
Under inflated tyres result in higher fuel consumption as they increase road resistance. A tyre that is 20% under-inflated will wear out 25% faster.
A reduction in air pressure by one bar causes:
- 30% increase in rolling resistance
- rise in fuel consumption of 3%
Unauthorised Use
Vehicle tracking can help to identify, monitor and prevent unauthorised use of company vehicles. This could be employees making detours during work hours for personal reasons; or out-of-hours use of company vehicles.
Through the monitoring software, fleet managers can view vehicle journeys showing the routes drivers took – and the times trips occurred. Fleet or transport managers to quickly identify those miles employees drove for personal reasons, but using your fuel.
Another way to prevent unauthorised vehicle use is with geo-fencing. Geo-fences are virtual boundaries around geographical locations.
Once the geofence is configured, the manager will then receive a notification every time that vehicle crosses the boundary.
Nearest Vehicle
Leading telematics solutions now incorporate “Find My Nearest Vehicle” features, so you can type in a postcode and immediately see which of your vehicles is closest to that location.
Many fleet operators often encounter last-minute requests from customers or client emergencies which require an immediate response.
Telematics enables managers to quickly identify the nearest vehicle to the location which:
- cuts down on wasted mileage
- improves the response time to your customer
- improves customer service
Vehicle Utilisation
Route optimisation over basic route planners is that it can substantially increase vehicle utilisation rates. Consolidating your goods deliveries and collections onto fewer vehicles reduces wasted miles and empty running.
Driver Safety
At least one in three (31%) fatal crashes and one in four (26%) serious injury crashes in Britain involve someone driving for work. Through the monitoring software, fleet managers receive real-time data through the vehicle management systems. Automated FNOL (first notification of loss) event notifications push data to third parties such as police and insurers to minimise stress and improve downtime.
Fuel Card Integration
Our Kinesis solutions offer the potential of linking your fuel card account to your telematics account. This gives fleet managers the assurance that data from both accounts matches. And there’s no unauthorised usage.
Useful Stats
The investment in telematics devices doesn’t take long to pay for itself.
The benefits to your company are positive and far reaching:
- 80% Reduction in overtime claims
- 39% Reduction in accidents
- 35% Reduction in speeding
- 25% Reduction in insurance costs
- 10% Reduction in fuel costs
Useful Links
For more information on how we can help your fleet reach its full potential call us on 0800 6126132 or go to www.cambriancards.com/telematics/
To find out more about our range of Trakm8 devices click here – https://www.cambriancards.com/trakm8-telematics/
To find out more about our range of Radius Telematics devices click here – https://www.cambriancards.com/radius-telematics-home/
