Save Money By Tracking Vehicle Travel Patterns

You can save company money in a very big way by tracking vehicle travel patterns. Since you can't be in every vehicle, every minute of every day, you really cannot know how a vehicle is being used. You probably also don't have time to do the math to see if any of your fleet vehicles are racking up huge numbers of miles. But by tracking vehicle travel patterns with a simple GPS device, you can know exactly where every vehicle has been driven.

Most companies have policies in place stating that company vehicles can only be used for company business. Some companies allow their employees to take vehicles home, while others do not. But are you tracking vehicle use? Some of the most common abuses of company vehicles include:

- running errands on the way from the last business stop back to the garage

- using the truck for your weekend moving business

- using a company car you are allowed to drive to and from work to take your kids on weekend day trips.

Each of these abuses of the privilege of driving a company vehicle can be detected by tracking vehicle movement. With a simple GPS tracking device that attaches to the steering column of each vehicle, you can not only know where each vehicle is at any moment (because you will be tracking vehicle movement), but you can also use the capability of tracking vehicle movement and save the history to prove where each vehicle has been and when it was there.

Let's look at the cost of fuel for this kind of activity. Let's assume that you have 30 vehicles in your fleet. Some are trucks, some are cars, and some are vans. Let's say that the vehicles are being driven an average of 150 miles each week for non-business activities, and that the average gas mileage over all vehicles is 15 mpg. Let's also assume that the price of fuel averages about $2.80 per gallon. When you do the math, the annual cost for misuse of your vehicles is $43,680 for fuel alone. Tracking vehicle use allows you to document this cost.

By the time you add up the pro rated costs for everything else, you could be saving a bundle by tracking vehicle use. Take a few minutes to figure it out. Gather all of the costs on a 'per vehicle' and a per mile basis: fuel, oil, insurance, maintenance, parts, wear and tear, tires, license tags, taxes and the risks of having the vehicle on the road.

When you add up all of the costs for unauthorized use of all vehicles in your fleet you might be surprised by how widespread the problem actually is. When the reports from tracking vehicle movement are compiled, you would have a good bit of evidence for tighter enforcement of the rules governing use of corporate vehicles. You might also discover that you would be able to save enough money to pay for GPS devices for every vehicle and for monitoring in less than 90 days. You could end up getting a raise, the reports from tracking vehicle travel patterns would make your work easier and faster, and the company could do something important with the money you save.

Finally, consider that I've only asked you to think about the cost of unauthorized use of company vehicles and the cost savings you could achieve by tracking vehicle use. Now think about the money you could save if you could prove that some of your drivers were intentionally taking longer routes from one place to the next, or that by tracking vehicle movement you could prove that some of your drivers are sitting somewhere killing time. The more you think about the value of tracking vehicle movement, the greater the potential savings you can achieve for your company.