On the roadways, your drivers represent your business. The actions of your drivers greatly affect public opinion about your business and can have a direct impact on where people turn for their business needs. Regardless of the industry you’re in, if your drivers are driving recklessly or irresponsibly, you are losing customers and potential business. That is one reason so many companies took to using bumper stickers and vehicle signs asking drivers on the roads to call in and report about drivers.

The Fatal Flaw with the Bumper Sticker Idea

In theory it’s a great idea. The problem is that most drivers today either don’t want to be bothered with calling in to report on other drivers or they believe it’s none of their business and they should keep their thoughts to themselves. You’re relying on other people to monitor your drivers for you and that really doesn’t work.

They’re still forming negative opinions about your business based on the actions of drivers in both cases, they’re just not going out of their way to tell you about it. In fact, the only time reports are made are when drivers cross the line from aggressive or reckless into the territory of outright dangerous.

By then, you’re risking accidents, lawsuits, and a real reputation crisis. The bottom line is that waiting on the public to tell you how your drivers are doing is not an effective tool for measuring driver behavior. Since you can’t follow your drivers around all day to monitor their actions on the road you must seek other alternatives to get the information you need about your drivers.

A Sensible Solution

The solution is one that is simple, doesn’t rely on public response, and highly effective. The solution is to make use of GPS fleet tracking. Fleet tracking monitors your drivers and reports back to you for a wide variety of on-the-road transgressions, including:

• Speeding
• Hard Braking
• Fast Acceleration
• Swerving
• Weaving
• Distracted Driving
• Route Deviations
• After-Hour Use of Company Vehicles

In fact, you can identify the behaviors you want it to report and how you want it reported (text message, email, etc.). The great thing about tools like this, is that they allow you to look for signs of consistent driver behaviors.

It’s one thing for drivers to react to events on the road, it’s another thing to have a pattern of these reckless or aggressive driving actions. Receiving these notifications from a GPS fleet tracking system allows you to address these patterns among your employees before they become bigger problems for your business than a reputation hit.

Contact us here at LiveViewGPS at 1-888-544-0494 to learn more GPS fleet tracking.

Sewer workers have important jobs that ensure the safety of communities. When the city of Modesto found sewer workers goofing off rather than doing the jobs they were being paid to do, it had no choice but to take disciplinary action.

The wheels of justice are slow to turn in some areas. Modesto sewer workers earn between $54,264 and $76,488 annually and are responsible for cleaning, servicing, and repairing the nearly 60 sewer and stormwater lift stations in the city.

An investigation, taking a little more than five months to complete, revealed that four city employees had been engaging in a variety of activities other than their work responsibilities while being paid to work for the city. In fact, one of the four men facing discipline resulting from the investigation received a full day’s pay at least 43 times during the five-month investigation in which he worked fewer hours than required to do so. A second employee did the same 37 times during the investigation window with a third doing so 24 times and the fourth man getting paid a full day’s pay when not working the required hours 10 times.

One employee was fired in the aftermath of the investigation, which was conducted with the installation of GPS tracking and the data gathered as a result, though he is appealing the decision to an arbitrator. Two employees facing discipline resulting from the findings of the investigation have since retired while a fourth received a two-week suspension without pay along with one year of probation.

Part of the reason it took so long, five months, to conduct the investigation and even longer before taking action was the matter of a lack of staffing for the city and the complex legalities of an investigation of this nature which affords city employees union and legal representation, the rights to hearings, and due process rights as well.

The investigation was prompted by an investigation in which The Bee observed a city sewer worker appearing to nap in his truck while it idled for approximately 50 minutes, other employees taking extended lunch breaks, and one worker shopping at Lowe’s during work hours.

GPS fleet tracking can be instrumental in keeping sewer workers and other city employees on task when out of sight – but only if someone is monitoring driver activities on the other end.

According to the Irish Examiner, animals, such as the fox, hare, and red deer are suffering as a result of a landscape dominated by humans. Concerns have arisen that the expansion of humans into landscapes once left to these animals may leave them more isolated and vulnerable to extinction.

A global wildlife study involving 114 scientists and 803 animals from 57 species on six continents has used GPS location tracking data to make big picture conclusions about the impact of man on the routine migratory movements of animals.

The one consistent thing the study discovered is that among all animal species the overwhelming response to the encroachment of humans into their territory has resulted in a reduction of their movements.

Unfortunately, many of these animals need to move to have access to food at certain times of the year. They move to find shelter and to mate. These things are all affected by the reduction in movements.

The one or two-year impact might be a decline in procreation and population. Over time, though, the consequences could be devastating to entire ecosystems.

One point made is that only 20 years ago, the elk population was nearly 90 percent migratory and counted above 2,000. Now, they are only 30 to 40 percent migratory and they number around 500.

These sharp declines in population, unfortunately, are not isolated among elk. The elk are sources of food for grizzlies and wolves. Their populations are now in a state of decline due to an absence of food.

GPS has been instrumental in helping to identify the changing migratory patterns of these animals as they relate to the ever-expanding presence of human in their territories.

This is only one example of how GPS tracking technology can be used to fuel research, aid in conservation efforts, and get the conversation started about the impact a constantly expanding human presence is having on nature – specifically when it comes to supply and demand.

GPS has also been used to help reintroduce animals to the wild after spending time under the care of humans, to gather data about animal populations, to provide insight into how animals make decisions about migration, mating, etc. and to make important conservation decisions designed to help threatened and/or endangered species thrive once again.