GPS Monitoring Keeps Buses on Track

While the products on the market differ in a variety of ways, most are defined by their alerting and reporting capabilities. In the short term, alerts can notify the user of events via e-mail or mobile device. Triggers can include excessive speeding, excessive idling, engine start-up or shut-down during off-hours, unauthorized vehicle usage and when a vehicle enters or exits specific geographic areas.

Alerts can also be flagged in relevant reports. With equal emphasis on comprehensive information and ease-of-use, these can be generated on a weekly or monthly basis, or even on demand. Data can include information about bus activity, speeding violations, vehicle starts and stops, excessive idling times and more. Extensive historical reporting functions enable the user to compare the performance between two employees, or against the company average in such areas as speeding, idling, miles driven and engine-on or off times.

Getting Drivers On Board

Not everyone embraces technology, so introducing GPS fleet tracking to your organization may meet with some resistance — particularly from drivers who may feel as if this means management doesn’t trust them.

Hopefully, by focusing on the economic benefits of the system, you can assuage their concerns. Here are a few talking points:

• GPS fleet tracking rewards hard work and eliminates bad habits that can lead to serious financial loss.
• It provides important safety functions for the vehicles as well as the drivers.
• The system protects drivers against false complaints about behavior and services not rendered.
• The numerous benefits of GPS tracking help increase revenue, which adds to the company’s financial stability and provides drivers with job security.

GPS is fast becoming the industry standard for any organization with vehicle fleets. The economic and safety benefits alone should be enough to convince companies that have yet to implement it to do exactly that. Best of all, its growing worldwide ubiquity should help bring any doubters of its usefulness on board.

David Brown is the vice president of sales with FleetMatics.