What Is GPS Fleet Tracking Technology?
Installing GPS telematics devices on vehicles allows fleet managers to track down their drivers’ locations and statuses within seconds. Combined with mapping and cellular communication, a GPS device can provide the vehicle’s real-time location being tracked.
High-end fleet tracking systems offer distinct visibility and an actionable perception into many areas, i.e., controlling driver behavior, managing vehicles, dispatching crews, ensuring customer satisfaction, and managing fuel consumption.
GPS and wireless technology have progressed to the extent where vehicle tracking and fleet management technology can incorporate data such as maps, traffic, and declared speed limits in real-time. As a result, all segments within organizations can interconnect, enhance competencies, and dive into data such as fuel consumption, fuel efficiency, vehicle speed, and maintenance requirements.
This data helps expand operative efficiency, reduce overall fuel consumption, and save you thousands of dollars a year. Moreover, installing GPS vehicle tracking devices will make drivers more responsible.
How GPS Fleet Tracking Helps Reduce Fuel Costs?
Fuel is the most critical constituent for working fleet vehicles and the bigger cost factor as well. Fleet fuel efficiency can save you from additional expenditures every year. It could be enough to improve your business setup or better maintain the fleet you have.
GPS fleet tracking combined with fleet management software not only allows you to track your fleet, but you can use the data to improve fuel efficiency as well. Fleet tracking systems are highly effective in managing the fuel economy of any fleet operation.
Here are some ways through which GPS tracking helps reduce fuel costs:
Avoid Unnecessary Idling
Idling vehicles leads to pointless waste of fuel and gathers up high costs. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, idling can consume a quarter to a half gallon of fuel per hour! This wasted sum can add up across your fleet and can lead to critical depletion of your productivity.
To begin making amends, you can instruct your drivers to turn their engines off when parked or standing for a while. You should also guide your drivers to switch gears quickly to lower their total RPM, diminishing fuel consumption.
This will help you claim decent financial savings in the fuel consumption department.
Fleet managers can maintain an efficient fuel economy by implementing the following idling strategies for their drivers:
- Turn off the engine while waiting or making deliveries
- Turn off the engine while in a traffic jam
- Do not idle to reheat the engine; simply start driving
But instead of relying on your drivers to provide accurate information, you can and should acquire assistance from a GPS tracking system. You can conveniently analyze the vehicle’s route, where it spent its time, and how long it idled, all via your fleet management software.
With a proper fleet management system, you can get alerts on idling and subsequently ask your drivers to avoid this practice.
Control Speeding
Excessive speeding and braking is a form of dangerous driving behavior and increases overall fuel consumption. Even exceeding just a few miles per hour over the speed limit can undesirably cut down fuel efficiency.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, every 5 miles per hour in addition to 60 mph can affect your business by increasing the fuel costs by $0.15–$0.30 (per gallon, consumed normally) and decreases fuel economy by a whopping 10%.
Thus the more your driver’s speed, the higher your fuel cost will be.
With help of a GPS tracking solution, you can observe driving speeds for all cars in your fleet. Fleet management and GPS tracking services include a detailed record of speed limits that can be used to identify when and for how long one of your drivers speed beyond the limit.
Maintaining an optimum target speed can account for approximately 27% lower fuel costs, thus contributing to fuel savings for the business. The GPS tracking system allows you to confirm whether your drivers follow the optimum speed limits and traffic laws.
Find Better Fleet Routes
Optimizing the travel route helps drivers follow the most suitable course on the map, avoid traffic encounters, decrease idling and other delays, saving fuel. In a nutshell, the routes your drivers take will determine the fuel costs of your operation.
There are two important aspects to consider in this regard:
Un-monitored workers: To be frank about it, not every driver makes an accurate judgment all the time. In some cases, a worker may be just knocking up miles to waste time or increase mileage compensation. Leaving the issue unattended will continuously feed your fuel costs.
Planning and organizing your routing more efficiently results in better daily mileage. GPS tracking system provides a platform to keep an eye on your workers. You can cut down the extra miles and thus maintain an efficient fuel economy by providing them optimized routes to follow.
Criss-crossing routes: Planning routes using an understanding of the area can recurrently produce excessive windshield time for drivers. Route planning and optimization with the help of specialized software will surely help reduce any additional fuel costs.
GPS tracking and fleet management can help you determine the most effective routes without putting in much effort. With GPS fleet management, you can simply map out routes in advance to consider shorter drives, allowing your drivers to get to their final destination point as quickly as possible.
Dispatching Decisions
During dispatching work, recruiting a worker closest to the customer site will improve your service levels and decrease the fuel costs at the same time. Fleet dispatchers can swiftly interconnect with drivers to determine the best routes on the road, including multiple-stop trips even as driving situations or work sequence change during the day.
Since high-end GPS Tracking systems provide better visibility regarding the fleet vehicle location in real-time, they help dispatchers select the closest workers for customer service requests. Plus, you don’t have to worry about much either. The fleet tracking and management services allow you to enter any location in the system and tell you exactly how far a vehicle is from that specified location.
Optimize Maintenance
Well-maintained vehicles stay in action longer, function more efficiently, generate lesser greenhouse gases, and provide a more reliable service overall. Optimized and regularly upgraded engines run more proficiently, saving money and fuel charges for fleet operators.
Vehicles offer the best gas mileage when they operate in the finest condition. Scheduled maintenance services, i.e., properly inflating tires, changing engine oil on time, replacing filters and spark plugs, will improve fleet fuel economy by 4% to 10%.
Luckily, high-end fleet management systems provide vehicle summary reports, maintenance records, and schedule warnings to help you ascertain that each fleet vehicle is operating as efficiently as possible.
Fleet maintenance alerts and notifications will constantly remind you of any scheduled maintenance needs based on variables such as mileage, drive time, or date. Service alerts help save fuel and shrink your maintenance costs at the same time.
Prevent Unauthorized & “Off-Hours” Use
Sometimes drivers choose to use company vehicles for unauthorized use, i.e., for personal matters or even running side jobs leading to increased company risk (in accident lawsuits), vehicle wear and tear, service costs, and fuel costs.
Pin-pointing the exact location of your vehicles at all times, even during the off-hours, will allow you to limit unauthorized usage. Plus, GPS fleet management systems allow you to set geographic boundaries (Geofencing) for your fleet vehicles and will warn you if a vehicle travels outside the restricted area.
This will keep you in the loop of your vehicle’s usage in general and improve efficiency by ensuring that company vehicles get used only for company work.
Avoid Traffic
You can also eliminate unnecessary miles driven and reduce the time spent idling in traffic for all of your fleet vehicles. GPS tracking systems use satellite signals to determine traffic conditions. Thus by integrating a GPS device in your vehicle, you’ll avoid routes crammed with heavy traffic.
By doing so, you can avoid fuel wastage, and it will also improve your customer service quality by ensuring punctuality.
Fleetr Is The Perfect Option For Optimizing Fuel Consumption In Small Fleets
It can be tiresome to look up for a GPS tracking system proficient in effectively managing fleets to overcome unnecessary fuel expenses. You can stop your search now, as Fleetr is the answer to all of your fleet fuel economy and tracking problems.
Fleetr offers exceptional service for minimal cost and without any binding contracts or other commitments on your end. The subscription costs only $9.99 per vehicle per month, and that’s it – no initiation fees, no extra charges, and no dues for the device provided.
You can also cancel your subscription anytime.
So what are you waiting for? Call us now!
