The ROI of GPS … How Productive are My Assets? (Part 9)
The ROI of GPS … Are you Hesitant to answer these questions? (Intro, Part 0)
How much time and how much fuel am I losing from idling engines? (Part 1)
Are my drivers speeding and where? (Part 2)
Where are my miles going? Am I making full use of expensive assets? (Part 3)
How much is asset abuse really costing my company? (Part 4)
When are my drivers starting work and when are they completing their shifts? (Part 5)
How many minutes of pre and post trip time are you paying for? (Part 6)
Are my drivers arriving on time for their deliveries? (Part 7)
Are my drivers making unauthorized stops? (Part
(Today’s Topic) How productive are my assets?
Are my sales representatives making their required customer calls?
How productive are my assets?
This concern is very under-analyzed in both commercial and government fleets. There are 5 vehicles out there in the parking lot (or 500) pretty much because there have always been 5 (or 500). What data is there to prove you can’t do the job with a few vehicles less - or make more money with a few vehicles more? The answer almost always is, “we don’t have data (except for mileage)”.
An interesting real world example came to me when I did a fleet installation for a large government fleet that had installations in three different states. At the first installation, we did our testing and demonstration on 7 special refrigerator trucks that were selected for the pilot program because they went to all the unit’s locations frequently. Everything worked fine, and aside from the usual speeding and driver abuse issues, all was a success.
At the next of the three units the same mission was carried out by only three of these special trucks. Actually, it was a larger unit and had more ground to cover, but busy with the rest of the issues of training and bringing a new system on line, I didn’t spend much time thinking why 3 vehicles could do the work of 7.
When we moved on to the third and final unit, guess what we found out about their special purpose refrigerator trucks. You might have guessed they did the work with only one or two … or that they had a dozen. Well, both guesses would be wrong… they had none!
The mission was carried out by other personnel who also visited the sites daily, in much smaller and more economical vehicles. The refrigeration requirements? Oh, they were taken care of by means of a very high-tech plastic picnic cooler chest.
Folks, I am not recounting this story because I wanted to poke fun at the management. They were all very smart folks, working hard to do their job. The problem was, there was no way for them to actually measure what their vehicles were doing … so everything was pretty much done the way it had been before.With a low cost, no monthly cost ’supervisor’ riding aboard each truck for free, you’ll know precisely what each vehicle’s contribution is to the bottom line. You’ll also have one or two mouse click reports that will show you abuse, such as over-idling, speeding, harsh braking and more … letting you measure what you are attempting to manage