GPS Fleet Management Software

Fleet management has come a long way since the days when drivers had to stop and call in from the field. Advanced technology can help contractors manage their fleets and control the flow of information necessary for everything from customer service to payroll.

One of the most advanced technologies available today is the global positioning system (GPS). When combined with specialized software and cell phones, GPS offers capabilities and efficiencies that were unheard of a few years ago.

Yet, in spite of the benefits that GPS offers, many contractors have not adopted the technology. In fact, 78 percent of respondents to a recent survey by the Construction Financial Management Association (CFMA) report that they do not use GPS for fleet management.

GPS Providers
A number of other companies provide GPS applications. @Road, a leader in the mobile resource management category, has taken GPS to a new level. The company’s GeoManager PE (Pocket Edition) software, which can be used with cell phones and pocket PCs, combines GPS, wireless communication and the Internet to enable real-time monitoring of drivers. The system can report a vehicle’s position and deliver detailed reports about every address at which a vehicle stops in a given day. Additional reports are available for everything from scheduled maintenance to whether your drivers are obeying the speed limits.

A plumbing contractor in Johnson County, Kan., says he has used @Road’s GPS capabilities for nearly six years. The company’s fleet of 15 trucks always is available to respond to customers at a moment’s notice. “We’re in the emergency business,” he says.

He has seen particular value in the system’s maintenance management capabilities. “We manage all our maintenance from our GPS system,” he says. “We just enter how often we want to change the oil and check the filters and, when the miles roll up, the GPS knows it. It even tells you how many miles you put on each tire.

“When we get a call, we can see which driver is the closest to a job with the right equipment and dispatch him right away,” he says.

“The other thing that we’ve found is a great management tool is using it to see how efficient my dispatcher is,” he says. “You can look at the ‘breadcrumbs’ to see whether the driver took the most direct route.” Breadcrumb trails of position markers in GPS programs record the positions of the driver at specified moments and present the data as a display.

Some GPS fleet management solutions also can be used to track employee time. “We don’t use it for ‘Big Brother’ things like that,” he says. “However, one of the things that we found very valuable is that we can enter all of the gas stations in our area and audit what time the driver buys gas and where.”

There are other benefits to having a GPS system in place. “One of the most interesting things that’s happened since we’ve had the system is when one of our drivers was accused of hitting a car,” he says. “By checking my GPS, I was able to show a police investigator that we didn’t have a truck on that street that day.”

While that helped him out of a potential jam, GPS has done much more for him. “Now, I just touch a button and I can see exactly where my driver is,” he says. “And I can tell my customer, ‘I have a driver in your neighborhood. I’ll send him right over.’ And I can have him there before I hang up the phone. I think it will be a standard tool in the future for businesses that want to be more efficient.”