September 2, 2010 – 4:33 am
Over 80 fleet management professionals and fleet solution providers were in attendance at the 100 Best Fleets Seminar held in Santa Ana, CA, August 26 to discuss best fleet management practices and to solutions to current issues in government fleet management. The seminar was presented by Government Fleet magazine. Tom Johnson, founder of the 100 Best Fleets, was the opening speaker at the fleet management event.
John Alley, CAFM, deputy director, fleet services for the City of San Diego, was named Government Fleet’s 2010 Public Sector Fleet Manager of the Year. Congratulations Mr. Alley! Among his notable accomplishments in 2009, Mr. Alley helped save the City of San Diego nearly $12 million through a fleet reduction program that reduced underutilized and obsolete fleet vehicles by more than 300 units. More on Alley’s award-winning fleet practices will be featured in an upcoming issue of Government Fleet Magazine.
September 2, 2010 – 3:56 am
GPS tracking system, FieldLogix, can quickly slash vehicle fuel consumption and fuel expenses plus reduce greenhouse gas pollution and CO2 vehicle emissions. FiedlLogix GPS system will give your fleet managers a GREEN Fleet Management Report that is easy to understand and utilize to develop a green fleet strategy. These automated Green Fleet Score Reports work around the clock, so you can quickly see increases in profitability, performance and greenhouse gas emissions reductions. With this type of GPS system, even a small fleet can save thousands of dollars per vehicle per year.
Vehicle GPS systems enable drivers to easily set attainable goals to reduce vehicle emissions and show tangible results. Reports that used to take days or months to compile now take just seconds thanks to recent improvements in fleet telematics technology. Modern GPS tracking systems can do things today that they were unable to do even just a few years ago. As the demand for Green features increases, the wireless telematics GPS technology is evolving.
Whether you have a fleet of one van or one thousand, all fleet managers should consider installing a GREEN GPS system into their fleet vehicles to monitor engine diagnostics, fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. With “Green” fleet GPS systems, it’s easy for fleet managers to identify areas for improvement and take decisive action on key issues such as:
August 31, 2010 – 2:22 am
GPS Fleet Tracking System Solutions:
Regardless of which state you are in, texting while driving is irresponsible and dangerous, especially for those driving large commercial fleet vehicles such as heavy duty trucks. Less than two weeks ago a very famous and successful plastic surgeon drove off a cliff in Mailbu because he was texting while driving. The accident demonstrates the very real danger of texting or tweeting while driving, an activity that has reportedly spiked in recent years.
“I hear, almost daily, accounts of people who are injured while texting,” said Dr. Angela Gardner, president of the American College of Emergency Physicians. Gardner said “It has stopped being an oddity when we hear that someone was texting and has a wreck. Now it’s more of a fairly common occurrence…While sending out a status update during a leisurely drive may seem innocuous, it only takes a moment for distracted drivers to become vulnerable.”
Text messaging has been the primary source of communication between truck drivers, dispatchers and fleet managers for many years. Fleet managers have relied on text messaging to stay in touch with their drivers at all times. When rerouting drivers or changing job priorities or text messaging has been the quickest and cheapest method of communication. In order to comply with recent text messaging laws, many companies have integrated GPS fleet tracking systems. Fleet tracking systems with Garmin integration enable dispatchers to send and receive information through a driver’s GPS system, eliminating the need for text messaging. This helps to keep truck drivers safe and comply with State text messaging laws.
August 17, 2010 – 5:23 am
Fleet Cost-Reduction Strategies: Direct Expenses
Reduce fuel costs. Fleet operators should focus on miles per gallon. Fuel costs are a large direct operating expense, especially for fleets with high mileage each month. Many fleet managers approach fuel cost savings by looking for purchase discounts, which aren’t really feasible unless the fleet can fuel in volume at a single site. Fleet fuel cards can be used to direct driver purchases away from premium fuel, which offers some benefits, but the most significant fuel savings come from selecting more fuel-efficient vehicles. Moving away from heavy vehicles and larger engines can provide 30% to 50% fuel economy increases. Using a fleet tracking system to identify poor driving behavior that burns excessive fuel, such as speeding and unnecessary idling can reduce fleet fuel costs by approximately up to 12% per year. Also, a fleet fuel card will help move 8% of fuel purchases away from premium fuel.
Secure the best fleet financing. Proper vehicle financing should absolutely be considered. Leasing vs. ownership of fleet vehicles is a common funding decision for fleet managers, and the economic analysis often ends in a tie. The decision to lease or own frequently hinges simply on balance-sheet considerations.
August 17, 2010 – 3:20 am
Fleet Cost-Reduction Strategies: Direct Expenses
Sell used vehicles in competitive resale markets. Most fleets value their used vehicles based on market values published from various industry sources like KBB. Fleet managers are usually satisfied with the sale of an individual fleet vehicle if they realize close to the market average or, worse, an amount more than book value. This approach ignores that those published market values are the mean of a distribution of high and low prices. Far too often in a negotiated sale, the purchasing vehicle dealer or driver knows the condition of the vehicle better than the seller, and pricing it at market average gives the upside to the buyer. Only by pricing negotiated sales above the market average or by selling in a competitive bidding market with a larger population of buyers can sellers actually capture above-the-mean value for themselves. This approach can provide an additional 5% in average resale prices, up to $75,000 per year.
Reduce accidents and insurance costs. Typically most insurers will reduce your insurance premiums by over 30% if you install a GPS fleet tracking system. Moving beyond depreciation to other operating costs, fleet vehicle accidents require an average of $1,500 to $2,800 in repairs, but total accident costs are perhaps closer to $11,000 per incident when indirect costs such as injuries, liability, property damage, and workers’ compensation are included. Typical fleet annual accident rates range from 15% to 40% of all vehicles, so the savings opportunities by reducing accidents can be substantial. By mandating pre-employment and annual motor vehicle records checks, requiring safe-driver training, and enforcing a safety scoring system, your fleet can reduce its accident rate by over 15% and save up to $375,000 per year.
August 16, 2010 – 6:03 am
Fleet Cost-Reduction Strategies: Direct Expenses
Use the right vehicle with the right equipment for the job. Feature and model creep are common causes of excess fleet vehicle depreciation. Drivers love four-wheel drive, extended cabs, plush leather seats, V-8 engines, and all kinds of other features. While providing fleet vehicles with those options may be good for morale and can be a good business decision, it will add to the depreciation cost. Trading in older vehicles for more fuel efficient fleet vehicles is also a good decision and this will be discussed further. Also, choosing fleet vehicles without regard to expected resale value can result in higher depreciation. For example, if you convert fleet vehicles from SUVs to sedans and remove some unnecessary amenities you can save up to hundreds of thousands of dollars in fleet expenses.
Negotiate well with vehicle manufacturers. After selecting the right vehicle, acquire it for the best possible price. Vehicle manufacturers compete aggressively for market share and have significantly increased purchase incentives for fleet customers who buy new vehicles. By sourcing with only one manufacturer, your fleet can improve net discounts by approximately 5%, reducing depreciation by up to $225,000 per year.
August 16, 2010 – 3:45 am
Does your company have mobile employees such as sales reps or field service technicians who routinely need vehicle transportation to do their work? If so, managing your mobile employees and fleet vehicles effectively is an important part of maximizing revenue generation and customer satisfaction. Most executives understand the importance of keeping these employees productive, but they are often not aware of the significant productivity and cost-savings benefits that come from efficiently supporting employees’ transportation needs.
The Challenges of Managing Fleet Costs
Vehicle-centric companies, such as trucking and distribution companies, are experts in fleet management and usually have the in-house resources to do it quite well. However, for the rest of us in other industries, executives are primarily focused on managing the core of the business – whether it’s building high rises, manufacturing computers, or servicing HVAC equipment. Fleet managers simply don’t have the expertise or the inclination to invest much time or energy in improving fleet operations. Unless you are an expert in fleet management, vehicle expenses by their very nature are decentralized–usually occurring in small transactions spread across numerous locations and employees. On the surface, fleet management costs seem very difficult or control.
Contrarily, taking the time to focus on fleet management issues via basic operational policies and a little centralized control can significantly enhance worker productivity and result in major cost savings. Optimizing fleet management can ensure that mobile workers get the transportation their job requires while simultaneously yielding up to $1 million in cost savings for a typical mid- to large-size enterprise. Whether your company’s fleet is large or small, the same concepts apply.
Garmin’s fleet management interface provides the best way for fleet managers to improve response times, optimize fleet resources, and ultimately achieve lower costs and higher profits for their companies. Garmin’s fleet management interface makes it easy for dispatchers to send multiple destinations and on-the-go instructions directly to drivers. Fleet drivers are able to use the [...]
August 5, 2010 – 12:41 am
Fleet GPS tracking data combined with tax software can ensure private fleet operators in the US that you aren’t overpaying on your International Fuel Tax Agreement (IFTA) taxes. For most fleet managers, calculating IFTA taxes is a tedious but necessary administrative task. The good news is that this process can be automated if a fleet manager uses GPS tracking/telematics devices in its trucks, along with fuel cards and IFTA tax reporting software (or a tax service professional that uses this kind of software). Then the mileage driven in each state and fuel expenses for each vehicle can be automatically uploaded into the software and the proper IFTA paperwork can be printed out.
Using a GPS Tracking System combined with proper tax software can make this process much more manageable and less labor intensive. If you have a large fleet of over 50 vehicles, then there is a good chance you have an employee whose only job is to handle this paper-intensive task. If you are paying an administrator say $38,000 year to manage this process, investing in a Fleet GPS Tracking System is a no-brainer. While a fleet operator would probably never buy a telematics solution solely to eliminate an administrative position, it can contribute to the ROI offered by fleet telematics solutions.
Since truckers typically operate across state lines they often need to calculate their usage in various locations. GPS position reports are a good way to do this as not only would it report your GPS location but it would also report the exact time for each position report. Ideally, you could automate this process with reporting transmitted in real-time as you go.
Posted in Fleet GPS, Fleet Management, GPS System
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Tagged Fleet GPS, fleet GPS tracking, Fleet Manager, Fleet Vehicles, fuel tax, GPS, GPS Fleet, GPS fleet tracking, GPS Fleet Tracking System, gps tracking, GPS tracking devices, gps vehicle tracking, IFTA fuel tax, Telematics, truck fuel tax, truck tracking
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Lockheed Martin, a global security and information technology company, opened a Global Positioning System (GPS) exhibit this week in Vienna, Austria. The GPS exhibit is part of the permanent Space Exhibit at Vienna’s United Nations Office. The purpose of the exhibit is to emphasize the importance of satellite navigation technology.
Over 80 fleet management professionals and fleet solution providers were in attendance at the 100 Best Fleets Seminar held in Santa Ana, CA, August 26 to discuss best fleet management practices and to solutions to current issues in government fleet management. The seminar was presented by Government Fleet magazine. Tom Johnson, founder of the 100 Best Fleets, was the opening speaker at the fleet management event.
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