Fleet Tracking Guide
How to Develop a Fleet Tracking System That Improves Operations
Fleet tracking is an integral part of a fleet manager’s job and an essential element of fleet management. Fleet tracking refers to the process of tracking vehicles, drivers, and assets by utilizing hardware and software to capture key data regarding vehicle locations and diagnostics. These technologies then send that data back to your fleet’s main office so managers can track, locate, and monitor their fleet vehicles and drivers in real-time. There are many benefits to fleet tracking that a fleet can use to good advantage. This chapter will discuss how fleet tracking works, the benefits of fleet tracking, and the features Azuga offers to help you take advantage of these benefits.
How Does Fleet Tracking Work?
Fleet tracking technology has evolved significantly over the past couple of decades. It now works in real-time, so you always know where to find your fleet vehicles. We will go over how fleet tracking usually works in this section.
The vehicle tracking device connects at three points:
- The vehicle’s engine computer unit
- GPS satellites
- The internet
Using these connections, users who have a web browser or mobile app can log in and access their vehicle or asset tracking data in a dashboard that presents the live data in the form of maps, charts, and reports. With this software, users can see where the vehicle is, its health, and even driver behaviors like speeding and idling.
How Do You Install a GPS Tracking Device?
You may be surprised to learn that you can install Azuga’s tracking device in less than 20 seconds. All you have to do is plug the device into your vehicle’s OBD port. It will light up after a few seconds,, and then it’s good to go. Any vehicle built after 1996 should have an OBD port that you can use. Once your device is plugged in, it should automatically connect to your Azuga tracking software. If you have any trouble installing your Azuga device, you can check out this quick YouTube video that shows you how to do it.
What are the Benefits of GPS Tracking?
There are various benefits to GPS tracking software that your fleet should be enjoying. Otherwise, your business might fall behind the competition that uses fleet tracking software to its full potential. Here are some of the benefits of fleet tracking software that you may be passing over.
Simplify Dispatching
The more vehicles you have on your fleet, the more challenging dispatching becomes. When you have dozens of vehicles running on a tight schedule, it becomes increasingly difficult to manage all of them. Fleet tracking is one of the tools at your disposal that you absolutely must take advantage of to make this process easier. This technology maps out your entire fleet, telling you who to dispatch, where to send them, and how many vehicles you need for the routes that you have.
With fleet tracking on your fleet management software, you can review routes, assign drivers, and easily create schedules all from your fleet management dashboard. This means you no longer have to scramble to call drivers when you need to change their route at the last minute. Drivers simply view their routes from a mobile app and can see any updates from there. It makes communication much easier and helps you streamline the dispatching process without any issues.
Reduce Fuel Use
When running a fleet business, you’re always looking for ways to cut costs. Fuel is the lifeblood of every fleet business, and it can be hard to cut back on your business’s use. However, fleet tracking gives your fleet a couple of ways to cut down on fuel use. The first way is through route optimization. Route optimization software harnesses machine learning and algorithms to find the most fuel-efficient path that includes all of your destinations throughout the day. Not only does it make your fleet more productive by cutting down on time, but it also improves your fuel efficiency significantly!
Secondly, fleet tracking keeps track of driver behavior. This means that it can detect actions such as idling, speeding, and rapid acceleration. These are all behaviors that waste a large amount of your fleet’s fuel quickly. Luckily, when fleet tracking software detects these behaviors, it can alert you immediately so you can take action to prevent the behavior from occurring again. You’ll be impressed at how much fuel you save when you start using route optimization and tracking your fleet’s behaviors.
Prevent Vehicle Theft
Vehicle theft is one of the worst things that can happen to a fleet, and it only gets worse every year, with fleets suffering the worst. How can fleets combat this issue? Luckily, fleet tracking can help. There is a feature in fleet tracking called geofencing, where managers set up a virtual perimeter around a specific location. When one of the fleet’s vehicles crosses that border, the manager gets an alert letting them know. This way, when a thief tries to take your vehicle outside of an area that you designate, your software will notify you immediately so you can take action right away. The faster that you inform the authorities, the more likely it is that they will be able to get your vehicle back unharmed. Furthermore, this feature even prevents your employees from engaging in unauthorized use of your vehicles. Fleet tracking and geofencing ensure that your vehicles are only used on your terms, keeping them safe from anyone else’s motives.
Leverage the Power of Fleet Telematics to Improve Driver Safety
Fleet tracking technology has evolved significantly over the past couple of decades. It now works in real-time, so you always know where to find your fleet vehicles. We will go over how fleet tracking usually works in this section.
The vehicle tracking device connects at three points:
• The vehicle’s engine computer unit
• GPS satellites
• The internet
Using these connections, users who have a web browser or mobile app can log in and access their vehicle or asset tracking data in a dashboard that presents the live data in the form of maps, charts, and reports. With this software, users can see where the vehicle is, its health, and even driver behaviors like speeding and idling.
Keep Vehicles Maintained
Another factor that can hinder your fleet’s productivity is maintenance issues. Not only do these issues cause delays to your fleet’s productivity, but they also cost your fleet money in the form of downtime and repair costs that no fleet can afford. Preventative maintenance is the only way to avoid these unexpected problems, and fleet tracking can help you make it a breeze. With fleet tracking, you will always be the first to know when your vehicle has issues that need addressing. Telematics tracks your vehicle’s health and lets you know whenever there is a problem, whether with the vehicle’s tires, its engine, or anything in between. With this information in your hands, you can always get your vehicle repaired before the issue becomes catastrophic, which is, of course, the goal of preventative maintenance.
You never want your vehicles to suffer breakdowns; they’re an expensive burden to bear, and avoiding them saves your fleet money and time, keeping your fleet efficient and effective. Combine your fleet tracking information with regular maintenance checks, and ensure that your fleet stands firm against any maintenance issues that it may face.
Make Decisions with Real Data
We’ve established that fleet tracking is good for more than just keeping up with your vehicles’ location. You can obtain a plethora of information from fleet tracking, but how can you act on it? It’s no good to you unless you can gather it somewhere. That’s what insightful reports can offer! Fleet management software can generate reports that provide information on everything you can think of, including vehicle health, driver behavior, asset usage, fuel usage, and more! These reports can help you make important decisions about all aspects of fleet management. They’ll help you increase your fleet’s productivity and ensure that your fleet is the best that it can be.
How to Develop a Fleet Tracking System That Improves Operations
Top Features of Azuga’s Fleet Tracking Software?
Top Features of Azuga’s Fleet Tracking Software?
Azuga’s fleet tracking software is a comprehensive solution to all of your fleet tracking needs. This section will show you how our software can bring you all of the benefits listed above and even more! We will break our dozens of features into a few different categories and go over them individually.
Safety and Accountability
Safety is your fleet’s top priority, and Azuga’s fleet tracking software can help you keep your fleet safer than ever and hold drivers accountable for their behaviors. Here are just a few of the features that you can implement to create a culture of safety and accountability in your fleet:
- Track Driver Behavior: You can track driver behaviors such as speeding, hard braking, and cell phone distractions and act on them immediately.
- Limit Distractions: DriveSafe is an add-on that allows you to block smartphone distractions. It blocks texting, calling, or using distracting apps while the vehicle is in motion.
- Harness Diagnostics: You can use diagnostics information gathered by your fleet tracking app to maximize efficiency, cut costs, and reward drivers who engage in safe behaviors.
- Speed Alerts: Get alerts when drivers exceed a speed limit that you specify in your Speeding Alert settings within the software.
Reward Good Drivers
Part of holding drivers accountable and creating a safety culture is ensuring they know when they’re doing a good job. Otherwise, they have no motivation to continue their positive behavior. Azuga’s fleet tracking software has built-in features to help you encourage your driver’s positive behaviors.
- Reward Driver Excellence: Reward and retain good drivers with a rewards program that’s easy to implement and that drivers love. There will be more on this program in Chapter 8.
- Track Driver Scores: Our fleet management solution assigns driver scores to your drivers based on their safe driving habits and derived from telematics. Our rewards program is based on these driver scores..
Make Dispatching Easier
As mentioned, the more vehicles you have, the harder dispatching becomes. That’s why you need all the help you can get to make dispatching easier. Here are some of the features included in Azuga’s tracking software that make dispatching easier:
- Streamline Dispatching: You can schedule jobs, assign team members, and send automated dispatch notifications, all from your dashboard. Furthermore, you can check the status of these jobs, the drive time, and the miles traveled for every call.
- Live Map: You have a live map that you can use to see where your fleet is at all times. All of the information you could ever need, including job, driver, speed, location, and weather, is available instantly at the click of a button.
- Log and Tag Trips: When your drivers are using the FleetMobile app, it captures data from each vehicle they drive. This creates a comprehensive trip log, with trips tagged as business or personal.
Keep Up with Maintenance
If you’re keeping up with your fleet’s maintenance, you’re saving money and keeping your vehicles on the road. This means your fleet is productive and efficient, an excellent sign for your business. These are a few of our fleet tracking features that make it easier to keep up with your fleet maintenance:
- Scheduled Maintenance: Scheduled Maintenance is an add-on that ensures you get alerts as soon as there is an issue with your vehicle that needs addressing. You will save significant money that you would otherwise spend on costly repairs.
- Track Maintenance Logs: Your maintenance logs are stored within your fleet management system for easy access. This makes it easier to track everything done regarding each of your vehicles.
- Keep Up with Appointments: Keeping track of all of your fleet’s maintenance appointments can be challenging without appointment alerts. Our fleet management software makes it easy to keep track of your maintenance appointments.
Gather Informative Reports
When it comes to making important business decisions, it’s critical to have accurate data at hand to ensure that you are making the right decisions for your business. This data is easy to gather with fleet tracking software at your disposal, and we will go over some features here relating to reports that sum up this necessary data:
• Harness Insightful Reports: You can gather information on vehicle usage, operating costs, and driver performance with these reports that help you optimize fleet operations.
• Analytics and Data Visualizations: These analytics help fleets have data-driven conversations with their risk control team.
• Custom Reports: Work with Azuga to create custom reports on anything you need. These reports are free of charge.