How Towing Companies Can Benefit from GPS Fleet Management Rastrac Team | Apr 24, 2018 2:37:46 PM

Operating a towing business is no easy feat. In addition to being on-call 24/7/365, you, your drivers and fleet vehicle operators also face a lot of tests. These challenges can range from local and state regulatory compliance and safety issues to fleet communication and vehicle mechanical concerns.

In recent years, towing companies around the United States have started to equip their fleet vehicles with global positioning system (GPS) tracking devices to help deal with these challenges. Through the combined use of GPS devices and live tracking software, towing fleet managers can use this fleet management solution to their advantage by increasing productivity, reducing costs, and improving overall efficiency.

Here are some of the ways that your towing company can benefit from an effective GPS fleet management solution.

Knowing Where Vehicles Are at All Times

When you know where your vehicles always are, it can help to reduce occurrences of improper vehicle use by employees or the risk of theft by criminals. Using live tracking, you can see where your vehicles are located virtually anywhere and report that information quickly and efficiently to law enforcement.

Using Rastrac’s geofencing tool, you also can set up virtual perimeters to monitor when vehicles enter or leave specific areas.

Improve Communication with Reporting Capabilities

A significant advantage of using a GPS fleet management solution is that it provides greater transparency, visibility, and reporting capabilities. For example, Rastrac’s GPS fleet management software allows fleet managers to quickly track vehicles in the field and reach out to their drivers/operators as needed.

By using the software’s automated reporting capabilities, you can enjoy detailed reports that provide the data you need without having to spend hours of valuable time pulling the information together.

Ensure Your Fleet Vehicles Remain in Good Working Order

While it’s frustrating at the time, there is a certain level of irony that occurs when you send a truck out to tow a vehicle that isn’t in working order, only to have to send out another vehicle to tow the first because it’s stopped operating. This type of situation often can be avoided using vehicle diagnostics and regular vehicle maintenance.

With remote diagnostics and preventative fleet maintenance, you can identify and address an issue before it becomes a major issue. By bringing it in for maintenance and fixing it in a fraction of the time (and saving on the cost of a major repair), this will save your operations money and productivity in terms of transportation costs, labor, parts, and vehicle downtime.

Most modern GPS devices are able to connect to a truck’s onboard diagnostics system. This capability means that as a fleet manager, you can easily and efficiently track and monitor your vehicles remotely via a computer or mobile device to ensure that they remain in good working order.

In combination with effective fleet management software, you can monitor actionable data about the location and condition of a specific GPS-tagged vehicle, including:

• Vehicle location (in real time)
• Total vehicle mileage
• Vehicle alert codes
• Miles per gallon
• Engine idle time

You also can set alerts to send you email or text notifications to remind you when it is time to schedule preventative maintenance on your vehicles.

Monitor, Address, and Improve Driver Behaviors and Hours

When tow truck drivers and operators are in the field, it’s hard to know for sure exactly how they are performing. Are they driving carefully and being mindful of speed limits? Or, are they distracted and driving erratically where they pose a risk to other drivers, as well as your company’s brand and reputation?

With GPS tracking, you no longer must wonder. Using your tracking software dashboard, you can easily monitor several driver behaviors and events, including:

• Driver hours of service (HOS)
• Driving speeds
• Acceleration and decelerations
• Braking
• Stop distance
• Turning events

By monitoring these behaviors and events, you can improve your risk management efforts and address these issues before they become major (and expensive) liabilities for your company.

Reduce the Costs of Your Towing Fleet

Speaking of costs, another major benefit of fleet management software is that it can save your company money and reduce overhead costs. Some of the ways that you can save money include:

• Handling preventative maintenance that helps avoid expensive repairs.
• Providing documented evidence to address incorrect pay that results from employee timecard errors or misreported information.
• Providing documented information about driver behaviors that can save the day in the event of a lawsuit.
• Reducing costs associated with theft.

Increase Employee Safety

Employees who don’t have a horror story to tell about towing jobs that have gone awry seem to be few and far between. Some of these stories have to do with tow trucks breaking down, dealing with angry or violent people who are upset that their vehicles are being towed, or facing dangerous conditions or careless drivers on the roadways.

There is good news. When the flatbed or tow trucks in your fleet are equipped with GPS devices, it means that you can easily monitor the locations of those vehicles in real time. If a driver or operator is spending too much time in a particular area, you can then reach out to make sure that everything is okay or see whether they need assistance.

This helps to increase not only efficiency of your fleet, but also the safety of your employees as well. If there isn’t a response for a period of time, or if the driver responds that they require help, you can direct law enforcement or other emergency responders to their precise location easily and with almost pinpoint accuracy.

Increase Fleet Efficiency

As you can see, all these advantages of an effective and reliable GPS fleet management solution can help to make your towing fleet more efficient. It improves the communication and reporting capabilities of your fleet, increases the visibility of your operations, and saves your business money in several ways.

To learn more about how Rastrac’s GPS fleet management solutions can benefit your towing company and vehicle fleet, check out our free guide on how to improve your fleet efficiency. Download the guide now by clicking on the banner image below.