For any small-business owner, every dollar—and every moment—counts.
This is especially true for those who have a transportation component (vehicles or fleets) to their business. There is always so much to do: products to deliver, vehicles to service and maintain, and driver calls to respond to. Just keeping the daily flow of operations running on track and on time can feel like an overwhelming task.
The great news is that there are tools available that can help. Yes, they are based on technology, but they are simple to implement and use—and they are available today. In fact, these tools even helped keep transportation companies afloat and thriving during the recent pandemic.
In addition, these technology tools can make a huge difference in boosting a company’s competitive edge as well as helping make the shift from being in a reactionary role, with little control, to a more proactive one. In this blog, we highlight some key components to embracing these new technologies, and how they can benefit your business.
The device: GPS tracker
One little tool has revolutionized how people navigate from point A to point B: GPS device tracking. It is easily accessible everywhere, and it is transforming how transportation companies manage their vehicles. With a GPS tracking device, a driver can find a location, and the business owner can track where that driver is at any given moment. That means greater insight into the status of when products or services are delivered, or how vehicles are performing on the road. Real-time alerts can also be set up to help drivers or business owners respond to situations as they arise. This tracking ability provides crucial information and greater visibility to ensure all operations—on the road and off—are running smoothly, cost-effectively, and on time.
The software: greater access to information
More than ever, information is everywhere. The problem is that not all of it is equal. There is just too much of it, and it takes too long to sift through it to figure out what is usable.
This information overload is a challenge for any company, especially one that is actively transporting goods and services. So being able to seamlessly collect and use specific information generated from your daily operations can help you not only better manage your business but make better decisions, and faster.
With the right transport vehicle management software, you can access valuable information on:
- Number of vehicle stops (e.g., multiple or unauthorized) including if products or services are arriving on time
- Time spent at each customer’s location, providing insight into driver efficiency
- Idling and fuel usage, delivering real numbers on dollars spent on fuel as well as where to possibly cut costs
- Number of miles driven in each state or total number of miles driven per year, helping streamline routes and thus fuel efficiency
- Driver miles or hours, making the payroll process faster and easier.
The heart: a heightened focus on safety
Your products or services, as well as every one of your drivers and vehicles, matter. As a result, ensuring their safety is key.
According to the US National Highway Traffic Safety Association, “22.2% of the crash report was brought down when AI was implemented on route planning, which can detect roadblocks, heavy traffic, intersections, and roundabouts.” This statistic alone highlights the added benefit of using technology to improve safety. Specifically, it is essential to have the ability to:
- Monitor speed and driver behavior, ensuring adherence to company standards and limiting the number of accidents
- Better monitor vehicle health, such as knowing exactly when to schedule maintenance, making vehicles more reliable and safer to drive
- Respond quicker to breakdowns, ensuring drivers are not waiting long for help
- Trigger an alert in the case of a stolen vehicle, enabling faster recovery.
Technology as an effective tool for your business
Embracing transportation technology tools can feel intimidating, but they can actually help evolve your business by:
- Delivering better insight into driver behavior, time of arrival of products or services, and vehicle location
- Providing the information you need at any given moment, allowing you to pivot to address any issues and make informed decisions using real-time data
Ensuring your vehicles’ operations are running smoothly, efficiently, and safely—at all times.
Satrack: Industry Experts Who Can Help
Satrack knows technology—but we also know how to integrate that technology easily and effectively into your business. Our staff of industry experts can help you every step of the way, from the initial device installation to maximizing how the device can best work for your business. Satrack’s experience and international presence are the perfect combo for companies needing greater visibility and support to successfully manage their vehicles and positively impact their bottom line.
By choosing Satrack, you gain:
- Excellent customer service built on serving 40,000 customers over 27 years
- Actual hands-on support from industry experts when you need it
- Access to the tools and information you need to save money, make better, more informed decisions, and ultimately streamline your transportation operations.
Contact Satrack today to get a free demo.
Learn more about how Satrack can help smaller field service fleets optimize operations, improve driver behaviors and lower risk, deliver services on time, and reduce operating costs. Click here to schedule a call!
Tracking technology is all about optimizing the efficiency of your business. There are many benefits to equipping your vehicles with GPS tracking devices, but by far one of the most interesting is the savings you can make with regard to fuel consumption. Fuel accounts for around 30% of your total operating costs when you manage a business dependent of vehicles, so it is only natural that managers are looking to save in this area of their business’ expenses.
Many companies across the country are turning to GPS tracking software to save money on fuel in their business. The return on investment (ROI) with a GPS tracking system makes the investment well worth it. GPS tracking uses a fuel sensor to monitor the usage of fuel in real time, allowing you to make adjustments where necessary and reduce your overall fuel consumption over time.
Decreased Fuel Consumption
For any business that uses vehicles on its operation, fuel consumption is one of the biggest expenses after payroll. Therefore, it is understandable that companies want to monitor their fuel usage and see where they can reduce it. Vehicle management systems allow us to do just this, potentially saving us thousands of dollars every year.
The use of GPS tracking devices is not just for larger businesses. Even companies with one or two vehicles can reap the benefits of vehicle tracking systems. Here are some of the ways GPS tracking systems can help you reduce your company’s’ fuel consumption, saving you money at the same time as saving the planet:
Reports
One of the highlights of installing a GPS tracking system is that these can generate a series of reports. Within these, you can find information about driver operations, inefficiencies, and driver safety concerns. Not only this, but you can print or download them as PDFs or spreadsheets, providing you with tangible material to make changes that can save your business a lot of time.
Customize a geofence and receive alerts when a vehicle enters or exits your digitally prescribed boundary, so you know where your vehicles are and when. These systems also help you to discover unauthorized vehicle use, so you can cut out any undesired behaviors and analyze where your vehicles are doing right, to further incentivize your drivers.
Turn Off the Engine
Another way that GPS tracking technology helps you to economize on fuel is by alerting the driver and the system when the vehicle is idling, allowing us to bring this bad habit to light and work to break it. Idling uses up to half a gallon of fuel per hour.
While most drivers will turn off the engine when still for longer periods of time, GPS technology can flag when drivers are idling for minutes, prompting them to switch off the engine even for short intervals – over the course of time, this fuel-conscious habit can help increase savings, reduce outgoings on maintenance and is a sure win for the sustainability movement.
GPS tracking software can highlight how often drivers idle their vehicles so you can see where the numbers are adding up. The software collects and provides data which you can use to train your drivers in conscientious habits, such as turning off the engine when idle for any length of time. It is a myth that turning off and restarting the engine uses more fuel – just thirty seconds of idling uses more fuel than stopping and restarting.
Put The Brakes on Hard Braking
Gas mileage can be improved by as much as 10% when hard braking is avoided. Aggressive driving habits lead to more fuel consumption and cost small businesses money. The way GPS tracking software counteracts this is by registering the behaviors of your drivers, pinging the system when drivers accelerate quickly or brake abruptly.
It can’t always be avoided, of course. But when the system flags harsh braking as a regular occurrence rather than a necessity, it is an opportunity for small businesses to take the data accrued by their GPS tracking system and turn it into a learning point for their team. Not only can you save your company money on fuel consumption, but you also reduce the risk of rear-end collisions, so often caused by sudden braking.
Take it Slow
The nature of GPS tracking software is more than keeping tags on drivers, it is a way to essentially be in the vehicle with them and monitor safe and efficient driving behaviors. With regard to speed, fuel efficiency doesn’t really even begin until you reach speeds of around 60 mph, at which point you are already driving at the optimal speed for fuel economy.
How smoothly you drive affects fuel consumption much more than speed itself – constant acceleration and deceleration is a lot more draining on your fuel consumption than driving consistently at 70mph. GPS tracking devices allow you to oversee the speeds at which your team drives, and intervene if necessary.
With tracking technology, the speed at which your drivers work is recorded on the customized reports, so you can see over time how this is affecting your overall fuel economy.
Save Fuel, Save Dollars
GPS tracking software grants small business owners the possibility to monitor the driving habits of their teams, however small. By planning routes more efficiently and registering the driving behaviors of your team, you can save thousands of dollars per year – much more than the initial investment required to equip your fleet with the technology.
Aside from GPS tracking, remember to carry out regular maintenance on your vehicles to ensure they are in optimum conditions for fuel economization – badly-inflated tires and suboptimal air-conditioning units are regular culprits for unnecessary loss of fuel.
Additionally, using the wrong engine oil, and poor fuel quality can also have an impact on fuel consumption, so it is wise to be aware of your purchasing choices in this regard. As GPS tracking technology advances, more and more alerts are becoming available to ensure we use our vehicles correctly and economize on fuel, helping us, as small businesses, reduce one of our biggest overheads – fuel consumption.
Learn more about how Satrack can help smaller field service fleets optimize operations, improve driver behaviors and lower risk, deliver services on time, and reduce operating costs. Click here to schedule a call!
Sources:
https://www.fleetowner.com/technology/article/21684303/fleets-online-effective-routing
https://blog.bigroad.com/blog/3-operating-costs-to-track-while-maintaining-your-fleet#:~:text=Fuel%20takes%20up%2030%25%20of%20your%20total%20fleet%20operating%20costs.&text=This%20is%20a%20major%20outgoing,keep%20an%20eye%20on%20it.
https://scdhec.gov/sites/default/files/Library/CR-010109.pdf
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/6-myths-about-gas-mileage/
https://vocal.media/journal/top-9-industries-that-use-gps-tracking
https://www.tyrepower.com.au/news/how-does-tyre-pressure-influence-your-fuel-economy#:~:text=Under%20inflated%20tyres%20increase%20your%20vehicle’s%20drag%2C%20which%20increases%20fuel%20consumption.&text=With%20tyre%20pressure%20at%2040
Thanks to technology, today everyone is searching for speed in transitions, and just like you can purchase quickly, the transition is also completed in the least time possible and under the best conditions. On this front, logistics and transport companies today are being confronted with challenges that will determine who makes it in the business and who does not.
Technology and its advances are generating a revolution across all industries and by association the logistical tools that are needed to administrate these technologies: gps vehicle tracking solutions, sensors, automatic communications, gps equipment tracker, robots and “The Internet of Things”, where objects can communicate with each other, as well as artificial intelligence that permits machines to learn.
Logistics, as part of the industry, must advance alongside the transformations that are arising and make the most of this moment of accelerated development in software, apps and sensors which some are calling “transport 4.0” to successfully administrate activities which include:
- Geolocation
- Get real time notifications and alarms of your operation
- Optimization of route design
- Traceability of merchandise
- Automation of payments and proof of delivery
- Know and improve your operator’s driving habits
By doing this advantage can be obtained such as: greater customer satisfaction, which can have real-time information about their merchandise, cost reduction and operation optimization.
Some trends that are changing transportation today:
- Logistics or Green Transport: due to concern for the environment, new initiatives have arisen in transport, such as electric vehicles or the use of drones or bicycles, for last mile transportation.
- Collaborative transport: this is one of the trends that has had the most success: there are already mobile applications for those who want to use shared vehicles, not limited to private cars and also including shared motorcycle services.
- Intelligent devices for fleet management or gps equipment tracker: these seek to facilitate the work of those in charge of the fleet and even drivers, through real-time communication and monitoring of all the tasks that within the operation.
- Artificial intelligence: Information is the center of this trend in that information and data is collected and archived and then used to calculate optimal routes and to organize merchandise.
- Internet of things: communication between vehicles about traffic on the roads and even communication with the distribution center system to promote time optimization.
Learn more about how to optimize your fleet performance
If you run a grocery store you know how difficult the industry can be. Margins are low, food products have a limited shelf life and the cost of getting produce from the farm to the shelves is high.
GPS fleet tracking software can address all of those issues, lowering your costs, making your operation more efficient and potentially boosting your profit margin. Here are a few of the many benefits GPS fleet tracking software can bring to your grocery store operation.
- Increased freshness of produce – Fresh produce is a major selling point for grocery stores, but it is one of the hardest product lines to manage. Fleet tracking software helps company managers track the time from field to store – bringing customers fresher and more delicious produce every day.
- Better labor utilization – Driving a truck is a valuable skill, and an expensive one. GPS fleet tracking software makes it easier for managers to track their drivers and optimize the time they spend on the road.
- Ease of use – Some fleet tracking systems proved too difficult and cumbersome to use, but GPS fleet tracking software is intuitive and easy to use.
- Simple location of assets – Installing GPS fleet management software on company vehicles makes them easier to locate if they are lost or stolen.
- Increased safety – Grocery trucks and delivery vans often operate in congested urban areas. GPS fleet tracking software allows managers to develop better routes and improve safety for drivers, pedestrians and vehicles.
- Lower costs – Grocery stores operate on notoriously thin margins, so every penny saved makes a huge difference. GPS fleet tracking software lowers costs in a myriad of different ways, from better labor cost management and lower fuel costs to smarter trip routing and lower insurance premiums.
Nothing can make running a grocery store chain simple, but having the right technology in place can make it easier. If you have never considered a GPS fleet tracking software solution for your company, now might be the time.
