If you’re in the equipment rental business, you don’t need any help to know that it can operate at a hectic pace at times and the smallest details can be lost through the cracks for months at a time before you notice. GPS tracking can help you get a better handle on those fine details and so much more. These are just a few of the benefits GPS tracking has to offer your equipment rental company.

Ensure Timely Deliver of Your Rental Equipment

This is a bigger issue than you may realize. With some communities expanding rapidly, old maps are no longer relevant and new areas and neighborhoods might not even show up on the maps you already have. With GPS fleet tracking, you get access to the latest map updates and turn by turn directions, so your deliveries make it to the right location every time. More importantly, you can offer highly accurate appointment windows based on the schedule of your daily deliveries thanks to GPS navigation that can help you route around traffic delays, weather, and more.

Improve Billing Accuracy

With GPS to serve as a billing guide for drop offs and pick ups of rental equipment, you can improve accuracy in a way that wasn’t always possible when you relied on drivers to do the record-keeping. If there are disputes from customers, GPS data offers proof of deliveries and collections, so they can be confident that you’re not trying to take advantage of them if questions do arise.

Schedule Maintenance

Routine maintenance is essential for extending the life of your rental equipment. It is especially important since the people who rent the equipment may not be as careful with said equipment as they would be if they owned it. GPS tracking allows you to automate the scheduling of routine maintenance ensuring that it gets down and keeping your equipment in excellent operating order, thus making you more money, longer.

Discourage Thievery

Most of the equipment you rent out is expensive equipment that people don’t necessarily want to buy. Unfortunately, they may not be overly eager to return the equipment either. Some may even try to sell it for a quick profit. GPS tracking allows you to find your equipment – substantially increasing the likelihood of recovering your equipment if it is sold or just stolen.

As you can see, GPS tracking has much to offer your rental equipment company. These are just a few quick examples. The big question you need to ask is why you aren’t using it yet.

If you own or operate an equipment rental company, give us a call here at LiveViewGPS at 1-888-544-0494 to learn more about GPS tracking for equipment rental companies.

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.