What Is The Difference Between Fleet Management & Fleet Tracking?

When we talk with clients this question often comes up. Fleet Tracking is a subset of fleet management. Fleet management is the complete system of  management of a company’s vehicle fleet. Fleet management can include a range of functions which includes vehicle fleet tracking (and diagnostics), driver management and fuel management. Fleet tracking is an important and valuable tool to any fleet management program.

What are the benefits of fleet tracking to a company looking for complete fleet management?

There are numerous benefits of fleet tracking and each company has different aspects they see as most important relative to the pain point they are trying to solve. (For example, a company with high fuel cost may appreciate the fact that they can now track speed and routes someone took)

1) Driver Safety

Not only will drivers be more responsible because they are aware of the GPS monitoring, but fleet managers will know exactly where a vehicle is if it requires any assistance. Whether it’s a broken down engine or any emergency situation, fleet managers can send roadside assistance to help their driver.

2) Minimize Fuel Cosrs

While no company can completely cut fuel cost, GPS fleet tracking allows a fleet manger to observe a vehicle’s fuel consumption. The monitoring software will cut down on the amount of money spent on fuel by eliminating vehicle idling, driver speeding, any unauthorized usage, and gives dispatch the ability to optimize driving routes.

3)  Increase Productivity

Because of the ability to track drivers’ hours worked and routes taken, fleet managers can now make better use of an employee’s time. The GPS tracking software shows exactly where your drivers are at all times and keeps record of what work they are doing at that time.

The benefits of GPS fleet tracking are numerous.  Get a better grasp of how employees are performing and find better ways to manage workloads with a comprehensive fleet tracking system. Not only will you save time and money, but your drivers will be safer and perform to their full potential. All of which adds up to a smoother business operation and improved customer service that each of your customer’s will love.

If you are responsible for the fleet management and are looking for your fleet tracking partner to fill that component, contact us today and learn what we can do for you today.

8 Tips to Prepare Your Fleet For Winter.

An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure. Anyone in the service industry knows that idiom is as true today as when Benjamin Franklin wrote it. How many times have you seen a disaster at a customer’s house that could have been avoided if they performed a little preventive maintenance? The same can be said for service fleet vehicles in the winter. Preparing your fleet before winter arrives is an important part of avoiding emergency repairs and keeping downtime to an absolute minimum. Whether you have a service fleet of one vehicles or several hundred, here are eight tips to make sure your vehicles are ready for winter.

Below are eight maintenance tips that you can conduct to ensure optimum performance for your fleet:

• Tires- Make sure your tires are at the full and accurate pressure. Also, confirm that you have the right tires for your geography and conditions. Other than vehicle safety, the correct tire pressure also helps reduce fuel costs. Lastly, check to make sure the tires have sufficient tread, especially since your vehicles might be driving over rain, sleet and snow.

• Top Off Fluids- The best time to check and top off your vehicle’s fluids is before the harsh winter weather hits. Check and top off engine coolants, power steering, brake, windshield washer and other fluids.

• Gas– Keep your gas tank at least half full (especially larger trucks). Water vapor can collect in the bottom of the tank and be drawn into your engine’s fuel line: if it’s cold enough it can freeze and prevent your engine from starting.

• Battery- The low temperatures also have a negative impact on your vehicle’s batteries. When you need that extra cranking power, your battery may not be up to the task. Have your batteries checked and consider replacing your battery if it’s more than three years old. Keep the contacts free of corrosion with a terminal cleaner.

• Oil– When driving in cold weather, it’s important to make sure you are using the right viscosity of motor oil. Check your owner’s manual for the recommended proper viscosity for freezing temperatures.

• Belts, Hoses, Lines- Inspect vehicles belts, hoses and lines for wear and tear. A worn belt could spell disaster for you and your vehicle, especially when driving in extreme conditions. You don’t want a driver stuck by the wayside in the cold. Make a belt inspection and check for signs of fraying or cracking. Change any belts with even a hint of being worn to help avoid a breakdown during the worst of winter.

• Heater- Check heater elements and defrost to ensure they work accurately

•  Utilize GPS Fleet Tracking –Manage your entire workforce without having to physically be in the vehicle with them with InTouchGPS fleet tracking. For an incredibly low monthly cost you can track your vehicles in real time. Reduce costs while increasing profits with the aid of idling or speeding alerts, real-time location tracking, automated reporting and so many more features that our cloud based easy to use software provides. At any given moment, from any web enabled device, you can see where all of your vehicles are, where they are headed and fast they are going. With InTouchGPS you can even create maintenance scheduling and have automated timecard reporting.

These are just a few tips to keep your fleet optimized during the colder months. A last thing to consider is to be very clear about your policy on idling- Are you expecting your drivers to turn off the vehicle in any specific occasion or is using your car as climate control and keeping running to stay warm okay with you. (You can track this with GPS fleet tracking from InTouchGPS.) This idling can have a significant impact on the bottom line by allowing fuel costs to soar.

As we enter the winter months, be safe out there. For more information on other cost saving tips, contact InTouchGPS today.

Protect Against Vehicle Theft With GPS Fleet Tracking

Winter is coming and as the heat index decreases the number of fleet vehicles stolen increases. What is the correlation? While not always the case, fleet drivers using the vehicle as climate control means they keep it in idle and on during a quick stop, making the vehicle prime for the picking.

GPS fleet tracking can help you address this and other issues that encourage vehicle theft.

Vehicle theft can lead to unexpected replacement expenses and higher insurance costs for your fleet. While we can’t completely eliminate theft, we can help deter it these ways.

1) Immediately alert you of unauthorized movement. You can do this a couple different ways. You can set up landmarks and know when a vehicle enters or exits a landmark. You can set off/on alerts and know when an engine is being started.  (This can also prevent internal theft- moonlighting with your vehicle, its gas and your serviceman.) you to suspicious vehicle movement.

2) Set up idling boundaries. Another report/alert you can set is idling. Should a vehicle be idling is only something you can answer. You can always contact the driver and ask what is going on if you have any questions and implement policies and standards against excessive idling.

While GPS fleet tracking does help prevent theft, it is not failproof. However it can (and in three specific cases with us the last three years)it also help to retrieve stolen vehicles by enabling a user to provide a police department with a van or truck’s precise location the moment you realize it’s been stolen.

To discuss how fleet tracking can help prevent vehicle theft or to learn the other benefits of fleet tracking, contact us today.

Fleet Tracking Increases Safety

Driver safety and responsible driving are paramount of importance to any company that manages a fleet. It is a serious responsibility regardless of what industry you are in- from construction, to service to HVAC- across the board it matters. Companies are always looking for a way to increase safety and prevent and minimize incidents regarding their vehicles. Without attention and regard to safety measures, you can incur incredible costs, a tarnished reputation and most importantly, can jeopardize the  health and life of your driver or someone else on the road is at stake.
Safety is a matter for everyone on the team.

While it can’t stop all accidents, GPS fleet tracking increases safety while not hindering customer satisfaction or productivity. It does this in a myriad of ways, but the 3 most easily recognized is speeding alerts, dispatch and maintenance.

1) Speeding Alerts – While you can see historic data and speeds for any of your fleets for up to a year, you can always set thresholds and alerts in real time. You can be alerted if a vehicle is exceeding speeds that you deem as allowable. You can choose for these alerts to be received via email or text. Many managers choose to also have their drivers notified real time if they are speeding as to stop the problem immediately instead of an after action.

2) Dispatching Efficiency – Many drivers are speeding to get to a job on time or because they are trying to assuage an angry customer in an emergency. Our system has the capability to choose closest driver to any location and route them in the most most efficient way. This is effective in controlling speeding by preventing the environment in which speeding is “necessary” in the first place.

3) Maintenance Control Our system allows you to set up tasks and maintenance items to make sure that tire, brakes and the rest of the vehicles preventive maintenance is up to date and that the driver is operating a safe as vehicle as possible.

These are just three ways GPS fleet tracking can help improve safety. Contact us today to learn more about what other benefits fleet tracking can provide for your company.

GPS Fleet Tracking For Pool Companies

When many people think of fleet tracking they think of fleet vehicles -a legion of small white trucks ready to go out and service customers. While this is accurate, we define a fleet as any assemblage of vehicles that a company uses. Often pool companies have vans and trucks-usually wrapped with their logos. Read about many of the benefits that we offer to our current pool companies and what we can offer to you.

Pool companies have three main service offerings

1) Building a pool

2) Maintaining and Cleaning

3) Emergency Repair of any Pool

Regardless of which service the company is being utilized for the benefits of GPS fleet tracking run the gamut for them all.

Improving Efficiency 

GPS Fleet Tracking allows you to gain valuable data on driver behavior. An authorized user can pull reports as well as see real time activity and gather business intelligence. How long is a person at any respective job site? Is their an average time among your drivers? What is an acceptable time in which someone can do the job efficiently? Are your drivers lollygagging or are they earning their wages? GPS fleet tracking gives you these insights.

When a person knows that the boss has the ability to monitor their activities they are much more likely to be doing what they are supposed to be doing.

Speed Control 

As discussed many of the vehicles in pool companies are often branded. Ambassadors of your company as they drive through residential neighborhoods. Are they speeding?

Caustic chemicals and high speeds don’t mix…

You can use the system to see how fast people are going- of course safety is paramount, but the potential damage to your reputation of unsafe drivers is also a key factor in being able to tracking this (and many other) aspects of their driving. Not only can you easily pull a dashboard and see current and historic data, you can also choose to be sent real time alerts to immediately be able to correct the problem.

Idling Control

In climates with large pool communities it can often be blazing hot summers- are your drivers using vehicles for climate control? Are they keeping the vehicle on when they shouldn’t be. You can see how long a vehicle is idling to learn the answers to these questions and ultimately save money on fuel costs.

Customer Validation

Occasionally work is done when no one is home. If you receive a complaint that no one showed up or work wasn’t done you can verify or refute the accuracy of that statement through tracking. Many customers set up frequent recurring job sites as landmarks and send customers reports to show them the times they were there in advance. GPS Fleet Tracking allows you to verify exactly when the vehicle arrived at the site and when it left.

With these and many more benefits, pool companies have increased their bottom line and stay with us. If you would like to be the next pool company (or any service company) to start increasing ROI while reducing costs, contact us today for a quick no pressure 10 minute demo about what we can do for you.

Fleet Tracking In California

California, The Golden State. The home of the highest and lowest points in the contiguous US (MT Whitney and Death Valley,) Hollywood Stars and the busy traffic in San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego and others.

Anyone that works in some of the busier California locations understands the challenge of reaching the destination on time.  Any fleet manager knows that the traffic is often the biggest issue in getting the vehicles in your fleet where they need to be.

California is diverse and is a titan of industry and InTouchGPS is fortunate to work with many business owners and fleet managers from San Diego to San Francisco and everywhere in between.

California has very specific challenges in regards to when you are managing a fleet. Here are two challenges and how GPS fleet tracking helps solve them.

1) High Fuel Costs

Due to the sheer size of California and the congested traffic, trips may have many miles between destinations. Make sure that you are routing as efficiently as possible by utilizing our dispatch tool to give a driver the most direct route (and you send a closest driver from the job). Monitor speeding to ensure that the vehicle is being driven in accordance to company guidelines. Playback the route the driver took to verify that the customer was reached as fast as they possibly could be. Discover an accident or heavy traffic (well, heavier then usual) and dispatch can find a new route.

2) Wear and tear on vehicle is expensive

The frequent change of pace in traffic and stop and go means that your fleet vehicle takes a beating. While we can’t do anything about the traffic in California, we can help make sure that all of your required PM. and scheduled maintenance doesn’t fall through the cracks. Our maintenance feature allows you to schedule maintenance tasks based on date, run time or accrued mileage. You can also decide if you ( or whoever is responsible for the usage of the system) wants to receive text or email alerts when certain tasks are schedule or coming up or even past due.

California is a great state and we are one that are proud to work with in such strong numbers. Whether in California or any other great state in our nation, if you are interested in GPS fleet tracking contact us today for a no pressure quick demo or to answer any questions you may have.

Your Drivers Influence Your Company Image

Have you ever been driving down the street and all of the sudden a car comes out of nowhere and cuts you off? You are quite angry and as the vehicle speeds by, you notice that on the side is a sign that reads “XYZ pest control”. You have heard their name before, but knew else of their company.

What is your immediate thought?

If you are like most people, you automatically think badly of the company. In fact, you probably think “I would never use them” simply because of that one experience and the perception of how their workers acted in that one brief moment. It’s so said that in less than 5 seconds a company can lose business for no justifiable reason.

Now what if that is was your company?

You would hate to let the actions of one careless and selfish employee spoil the the image and brand that you work so hard to create and maintain. You owe it to yourself to verify that things like that, which are completely unnecessary and avoidable, don’t happen.

Using GPS Fleet Tracking technology, you are able to eliminate that type of behavior by tracking your employees speeds. You are able to know exactly how fast they are going and where they are when they travel at certain speeds. The key is that you are able to make sure that when you set a speed threshold, your employees won’t travel above it because when they do.. you will be immediately contacted. Moreover, by holding your employees accountable to where they are during every second of the day, their vehicle can be accurately tracked so that your employee can never say “it wasn’t me” or “I wasn’t there” should someone call to complain about their driving. Hopefully this will make them think twice when they wonder if they will be “caught”.

You now have the ability to easily and effectively maintain your company brand and image using our GPS Fleet tracking technology. Call us today for more details on how we can help you!

Here are a number of benefits:

1. This will eliminate high-speed more expensive tickets being issued by law enforcement. Anything over 14 mph can be considered reckless driving and even have the vehicle towed.

2. This will force your drivers to be more responsible when passing other vehicles on the roads, as well as swerving in-between vehicles.  This will help to ensure your drivers are protecting your company image while out on the road.

3. You hopefully will avoid higher speed accidents, and at least hopefully minimize the impact of the accident when traveling slower

4. Your fuel economy will increase.  Did you know that every 5 miles that a vehicle travels above 55mph can decrease your fuel economy about 12%.  Driving at lower speeds will help to decrease your fuel usage.

Holding your drivers accountable  to driving slower has a pretty amazing effect, huh?  We have reports and alerts to know when, and at exactly the time, that they speed.  Contact us today so we can tell you more!

Payroll is a huge expense. Many companies across the United States still rely on paper timesheets. One of the issues with paper timesheets and this type of record tracking is that people aren’t always accurate- sometimes accidentally and sometimes deliberately.
You trust your drivers- if you didn’t, you wouldn’t keep them working for you. Truth be told, most businesses don’t have drivers that are directly stealing from them, just maybe adding a few minutes here or there or rounding up or down o suit the situation.  One of the most common ways this is done is with their supposed time worked: