Fleet inefficiencies and safety issues are common in industries that depend on logistics and transportation. Proper fleet management through real-time vehicle tracking clearly reflects many of these inefficiencies, addresses them, and maximizes productivity by ensuring smooth operations. Besides lowering operational expenses and reducing emissions, real-time fleet tracking improves fleet safety and productivity by delivering precise and accurate location data across a fleet.
Vehicle tracking, with functionalities like vehicle maintenance alerts and driving pattern analysis, along with proper dispatching and fuel management, helps companies use their vehicles most efficiently.
Read on to know more about this technology that simplifies fleet safety and productivity, thus serving the need for fleet management and optimization in transportation and emergency services industries.
1. Getting Insights about Driver Performance
It’s crucial to keep a check on driving behavior, considering that distracted driving has been a major cause of around 3,000 deaths due to car accidents in 2023. Even mobile phone usage while driving causes 1.6 million accidents annually by reducing driver attention by 37%. In this scenario, vehicle tracking comes as an affordable and effective tool that monitors driver performance and behavior, further reducing fatalities and accidents and decreasing liabilities to increase overall fleet productivity.
With easy access to real-time data and problematic areas, managers can coach drivers accordingly and inform them about safe driving practices, further enabling them to focus on issues they must work on. The right van tracking system increases fleet longevity through less wear and tear, lower fuel costs, and fewer accidents, resulting in improved safety and better productivity.
2. Proper Vehicle Maintenance Improves Fleet Productivity
The right vehicle tracking system can help you set email alerts and reminders based on a vehicle’s odometer readings, engine hours threshold, and time. Such custom alerts for pre-trip vehicle maintenance and inspections help you keep your fleet in good shape while maintaining its longevity and staying ahead of all unnecessary services or expensive repairs.
The latest vehicle tracking solutions also make vehicle service reminders more customized, with added vehicle-specific details, like VIN or Vehicle Identification Number, license plate number, and registration number. Staying right on top of vehicle health through timely maintenance can lower operational expenses, improve productivity, reduce repair expenses, and increase time on the road for drivers.
3. Personalized Driver Training Keeps Business Safe
Vehicle tracking solutions are one of the best ways for supervisors and managers to break down driver behavior that can cause serious events and accidents on the road. The availability of actionable safety data can further help professionals spot patterns and trends of poor driving habits for each driver, thus facilitating driver coaching procedures.
For example, if you have a driver with a distracted driving issue, you can work with the driver to implement long-term and instant strategies to combat the problem. Since drivers can watch and understand their unsafe driving behaviors, they can work on eliminating them, which will automatically improve fleet productivity and business safety.
Vehicle tracking also enables you to view your fleet’s collated driving patterns. You can use this data to segregate your training programs for specific driver groups with the same driving habits. This form of customized training, added with reward programs for drivers who display consistent good behavior, significantly contributes to improved fleet productivity.
4. Simplified Digital Procedures
Besides helping with fleet management and monitoring, vehicle tracking also helps guide and organize teams with digital tools that simplify procedures, such as proof of delivery, document access, job management, and pre-trip inspection checklists.
The best vehicle tracking solutions enable drivers to access important documents, such as invoices or bills of Lading, electronically, thus saving a huge amount of time. Digitized procedures help drivers concentrate on the safest driving practices, thus reducing the chances of accidents, maintaining or improving safety scores, and ultimately helping you retain the best drivers.
5. Compliance Automation
Tired drivers and the road are a costly and dangerous combination. Therefore, regulatory authorities have a defined set of rules governing drivers working several hours for commercial motor and heavy goods vehicles. These rules governing driver working hours, regular and fortnightly driving time, and rest breaks ensure drivers maintain a proper work-life balance, which automatically improves fleet safety and productivity. Embedded vehicle tracking solutions offer ELD or electronic logging devices that automate driver work hour tracking and also help drivers log their hours of service accordingly.
Further, such solutions also enable fleet managers to set alerts and deliver messages to their drivers for break reminders and various other compliance-related activities. Thus, businesses can count on their drivers when it comes to maintaining compliance, reducing the number of traffic violations and incidents, along with costly fines across their fleet. This not only improves driver and fleet safety but also ensures good savings, resulting in increased productivity.
The Bottom Line
So, you can see that vehicle tracking offers several benefits, like boosting driver and fleet safety, providing real-time vehicle routes and location, and monitoring driving behavior, which automatically reflects on your bottom line. If you are keen on enhancing fleet efficiency, productivity, and reliability, it makes sense to choose the right vehicle tracking solution.
