Changes to Fuel Costs in the UK make it the ideal time to save money with vehicle tracking

In the 2009 budget Alistair Darling announced that fuel duty will increase from September 2009 by 2p per litre. This is an added cost to your company if you run a fleet of vehicles.

Vehicle tracking can help you to save the fuel used by your company vehicles so investing in this now, before the change in fuel costs, is a great idea. Not only will your company save money now but the impact of the change to fuel duty in September will be greatly reduced.

The fuel saving benefits of vehicle tracking can be achieved in a number of ways:

1. Monitor vehicle usage and reduce the amount of times company vehicles are used for personal reasons
2. Plan better driver routes, providing the most cost effective method of reaching your customers without making countless round trips
3. Track driver behaviour and make sure drivers are trained to not drive in a cost wasting way - such as excessive speed or leaving the vehicle idling

Find out how you can beat the fuel duty increase by contacting us today.

Educating your staff to use vehicle tracking software

As we have already discussed, the money saving benefits of vehicle tracking software are great, so in this blog we thought we'd cover helping to make vehicle tracking part of your staff’s day to day working life.

If your company has not previously used any form of vehicle tracking, implementing this might come as a culture shock to your staff. So here are some benefits to help them see that your new fleet management tool can help them as well.

Better route planning - rather than sending your drivers all over the place and making them double back on themselves Trimble's vehicle tracking software allows you to plot routes that save them time.

Driver to Office two way communication - let the driver communicate (without mobile phone charges) any issues with deliveries or customers.

Hour monitoring - don't need to fill in timesheets manually as the system does this for them, reduces paper work needed.

Vehicle Maintenance - reassurance that regular maintenance will be carried out on all vehicles meaning that they are not having the frustrations of broken down vans or nagging to get a vehicle serviced.

Vehicle tracking devices aren't just for the fleet manager, they help drivers too.

The Benefits of Vehicle Tracking using Geo Manager

Geo Manager is one of the Vehicle tracking solutions on offer form Trimble.

Geo Manager offers a wide range of benefits for your fleet including:

Plot the location of your mobile workers in real time with our MapView option

Exception reporting allows you to track driver behaviour and be alerted when your drivers break a set of rules that you can customise – such as a set speed.

Two Way Messaging allows you to keep in contact with your staff when they are on the road. This can help when new jobs come in.

Our Workflow status allows you to view the status of your employees

Using Trimble’s Geo Manager vehicle tracking in your business can save you money, time and help to monitor the safety of your fleet in real time.

Are you manually performing fleet management?

If you are responsible for managing your company fleet it might be refreshing to know that you can save time for the other jobs on your list by using Vehicle Tracking.

Trimble Vehicle Tracking offers a wide range of benefits to fleet managers, including in dept reporting about driver behaviour and vehicle maintenance.

Planning and booking vehicle maintenance can be time consuming and can sometime fall by the way-side in a busy company. Let Trimble Vehicle Tracking take the strain and plan your fleet management for you.

Increase productivity by monitoring driver behaviour and routes with real time tracking, route planning and vehicle status information.

There's no need for you to manually manage your fleet, contact Trimble today to find out more about how our Vehicle Tracking can benefit you.

Driver Safety and Your Fleet - How Vehicle Tracking can help

If you run a fleet of vehicles for your business you have to be aware of driver safety.

There are two sides to the driver safety requirements for your business.

The first is your fleet of vehicles you need to ensure that your vehicles are regularly maintained and are in good working order. New regulations in the UK mean that the company can be tried in court following any fatal accidents involving your vehicles, so ensuring that you have a high level of vehicle maintenance and a safe fleet is important to protect your business. Vehicle tracking software from Trimble can help you plan regular maintenance for all of your vehicles.

Alongside this is the driver themselves. Ensuring that your drivers are not driving in a dangerous way, and causing a potential safety risk for themselves and people around them, is also an important part of Fleet Management. Our Vehicle Tracking Software enables you to track the driving styles of your drivers and can also send you an alert if a given rule (such as a speed) is broken or deviated from. This gives you real time and historical data about the driving styles of your staff ensuring you can address any issues before they become serious.

Reducing unnecessary overtime with vehicle tracking

We're all trying to save money for our businesses at this difficult time, and cutting your overtime costs is one way of doing this.

Vehicle tracking software - like Trimble's TrimWeb - will help you to reduce this outlay, whilst still getting the same level of work done.

Here are some ways you can cut overtime

Plan better routes for your drivers, avoiding road works, traffic jams and making sure that the closest driver to the job is assigned to any new work you get in. Planning better routes will also reduce the time between stops and reduce idle times.

Monitoring the status of your vehicles to ensure you are making the most of each driver's working day.

Year End Nightmares? Vehicle Tracking Software could be the answer to your prayers

If you're running through your year end at the moment, frantically trying to tidy everything up for April and your driver logs are causing your no end of headaches, then why not try Vehicle Tracking Software from Trimble?

TrimWeb or GeoManager both offer full, customisable reporting, meaning at you not only have on demand reports but full monthly reporting as well, meaning that at year end the answers to your driver related questions are at hand including:

Number of trips
Private Miles Driven
Hours worked per driver

Meaning you've one less thing to worry about.