Windsor Fuel Saves Half a Million Dollars in One Year With FleetMatics Tracking Devices
They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. In the case of the manger of a group of service vehicles, a driver might say he is at X when he really is at Y, that he doesn’t use the truck for personal business when he’s taken it to the beach with the kids, or that lunch was only one hour when it actually was three.
But when you let drivers take service vehicles home and have no way of tracking their movements, you have to take such verbal or written reports at face value. And that could be costing fleets a fortune.
When Windsor Fuel Co. implemented the FleetMatics GPS Tracking System, it found a series of abuses from its drivers in terms of personal use of vehicles, inaccurate timekeeping and general inefficiency. By automating route planning and keeping close tabs on vehicle location, the company has realized substantial gains. It even managed to take one driver off the road while improving overall productivity. For Windsor, a single driver adds up to over $100,000 a year when you factor in payroll, health insurance running costs and insurance.
“We have brought in an additional $360,000 a year in revenue through increase productivity,” said Mark Holm, service manager for Windsor Fuel Co. “At the same time, we have been able to cut costs by taking one driver off the road without affecting the quality of our services.”
When higher revenue, fuel savings and reduced payroll are tallied up, gaining a full picture of fleet location and activity is worth far more than a thousand words. For Windsor Fuel, that picture equates to about half a million dollars a year.
From Oil to Service
Windsor Fuel is based in Mineola, NY. This family-owned firm has served the heating and cooling needs of Long Islanders through four generations. As well as year-round heating oil deliveries, it provides home heating system maintenance, repair and installations, heating oil products and services, diesel fuel, full central air conditioning capabilities, air purification, pool heaters, radiant floor heating and more.
While the firm once specialized in oil delivery, right now it only runs three oil trucks. Its other ten vehicles are service trucks. Those numbers vary on a seasonal basis and can peak as high as 20 trucks at some points of the year.
Oil trucks can make 20 to 50 stops a day throughout Nassau County, while service trucks make anywhere from five to eight stops. Each service truck holds about $15,000 in inventory and drivers take them home each day. In fact, drivers don’t even come into the yard at the start of the day. Dispatchers give them their deliveries in the morning and they leave directly from their homes.
From that point forward, however, Windsor Fuel had no way of knowing where its vehicles were. Holm had to take their word about location and hours worked. “Drivers manually filled in time sheets and would call us to let us know the job was done,” he said. “It was impossible to know if a driver had finished a call and had waited an hour before telling us he was done.”
Once Windsor Fuel installed FleetMatics on its trucks, however, Holm was shocked about driving patterns. “The first weekend I put in FleetMatics, I thought I would have to fire all of my drivers,” he said.
He noticed behavior such as drivers calling in for the details of their first call, and then going back into the house. Other drivers had developed the habit of taking their trucks to the gym, the park or even the beach.
Using a web browser, dispatchers can now see at a glance the current location of every driver. A big screen has been rigged up at the office where everyone can see vehicle positions. Holm even logs on to the Internet at weekends to make sure that no vehicle misuse is occurring. Recently, while on vacation in Iceland, he was able to easily track his fleet.
“Service trucks can now make an extra one or two calls per day and the oil trucks make three to four more stops than before due to better route planning, as well as enhanced dispatcher control,” said Holm. “We saved over $20,000 in fuel costs in our first year with FleetMatics and have reduced our phone costs by at least 20 percent.”
That adds up to a fuel bill reduction of 25 to 30 percent per month, or around 700 gallons less per month. Holm said that the fuel savings alone more than cover the monthly payment for the system. And by viewing the presence of all his trucks on one map, dispatchers know who is closer to the location of a new order without having to make half a dozen calls.
“The impact of FleetMatics had a domino effect on all our operations – everything gets more efficient,” said Holm. “If you are doing everything on paper, you never really know what is happening and end up sending the wrong people on new jobs. We don’t do that anymore. A FleetMatics screen picture really is worth a thousand words.”