Industry-First Real-Time Fuel Fleet Management System-Without the Necessary GPS Tracking
Automotive Resources International (ARI), a leading global fleet solutions provider specializing in complex car and truck fleets, announced the integration of its web-based ARI ACCESS System to the Wright Express’ portal. ARI is the first Wright Express co-branded partner to integrate in a real-time transaction processing mode, providing seamless integration…
A nice article for the start of the business week. A component vendor and an intelligent consumer went through the dance of investigation, specification, selection, negotiation and implementation.
So why isn’t “old Dave” all kinds of beaming over this announcement?
Long time readers will know … there’s a huge component of this system missing … GPS tracking!
A huge percentage of our commercial fleets are smart enough … that is, find it cost effective enough … to use a fuel management strategy. Often this consists of special fuel cards from a vendor who contracts to provide fuel at a managed cost and provide reports of when and where fueling occurred. The referenced system also adds the feature of making sure drivers who fuel within the program are currently authorized.
But programs like this do nothing to assure the company how the vehicle got empty tanks .. .where did the driver expend the miles … or did, in fact he even burn the fuel up on official trips, or did he fuel up with $800 or $900 worth of fuel, take a few days off, sell the fuel from the vehicle tanks and then fill again? You think scams like this don’t happen? I can personally testify that they do. In one case a new client, alerted by the activities of one of his drivers who was burning a huge amount of fuel on a particular day of the week, found that this guy had been robbing them for years … and this happened last year when fuel was a heck of a lot cheaper than it is today. Once again, managing without measuring is not managing anything!