A Mile Isn’t Always A Mile
Many aspects of business revolve around miles (or kilometers) traveled. For years we have had a useful tool in almost every car and truck called an "odometer". (French odomètre, from Greek hodometron : hodos, journey + metron, measure).
Mileage reimbursements to employees, freight charges to shippers, even approval or denial of expensive warranty claims al\re all based on this simple little row of numbers.,
Believe it or not, in the US there is no real requirement that this device be accurate at all. Testimony at court cases involving miles traveled indicate a generally accepted tolerance of as much as 20% +/-. This can mean thousands and thousands per year. I mean, in what other normal area do businesses accept 4% errors? Want to go to the bank with a $100 deposit slip and hand that along with $96 to the teller and see what happens next? Come on, it’s 2008 already … we are talking about a basic unit of measurement that costs most of us a lot of money here. 4%?
For years many commercial operators have used a device called a Tachograph … on of those registered trade names that has become universal, kind of like Xerox. In Europe. also a heavy Tachograph user, the required accuracy is +/- 4%. When you run a trauck100,000 plus miles per year, that is still a lot of room for error … especially when driving costs go way over $1 a mile.
Why can’t GPS solve this problem? Well, it can help … you can expect accuracy in the +/- 1 % range if you chose the correct GPS tracking equipment. But this still doesn’t get you scientific (or legal) proof that is needed when you are talking about money, employee compensation and even criminal evidence.
I have long been a reader of the excellent trade magazine, GPS World. They feature a monthly column titled "Innovation". There are times, quite frankly,that Innovation is way over my head, but I always try to blow through and get at least the gist of each month’s article. After all, learning means starting from scratch and stretching your mind a bit, yes?
This month’s article is technical and scholarly enough to suit anyone, but it is readable, and very informative. Even though the discussion is technical, this is down to earth business information that owners and executives need to know. Recommended.