The Savings You Are Missing

You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.

We all know this phrase and have heard it many times. Each week, we talk to a number of people who are considering GPS tracking for their fleets. Unfortunately, a number of these companies fail to “drink” from the GPS fleet tracking well. We can explain all of the benefits to these customers, but until they embrace the numbers for themselves, we cannot help them save the money that is there for the saving.

According to AAA, the national average price for regular unleaded is $3.962/gallon. That hurts! What hurts worse is the diesel price of $4.792/gallon. This seems to be all everyone is talking about. So, what does this have to do with GPS Fleet Tracking?

That’s simple. Short of discontinuing your business, tracking your fleet with GPS is the quickest way to reduce fuel costs. GPS fleet tracking allows you to set rules for your fleet and enforce them! People simply drive differently when they know they are being tracked. Thus, fleet managers and owners are able to reduce their overall consumption with very little outlay of capital.

Consider these example calculations for a typical GPS fleet tracking scenario:

1 fleet of tractor/trailers with 20 trucks

• The trucks each travel an average of 3,333 miles per month

 

• The trucks average 8 miles per gallon

 

Thus, the trucks require approximately 417 gallons of diesel per month

At today’s price, that’s a fuel cost of $1,996.47 per month

The cost of a fleet GPS tracking unit, per vehicle, averaged out for a year, is $62.36/month for the first year. The second year, it is just $39.95/month.

Our customers frequently report decreased fuel costs of 15% monthly. In this scenario, that would mean that the fuel savings, which would be $299.47 per month, would exceed the first year GPS tracking cost by $237.11. For just the first year, that’s a net savings of $2,845.33!!! Multiply that by 20 and you get a net annual savings for the entire fleet of $56,906.60. That would find a great Christmas party!

A year ago, this calculation for using GPS tracking on this fleet would have net a savings of $1,438.18 per truck and a total fleet savings of $28.736.60.

This further reiterates the importance of adding GPS tracking to your fleet.

One more example of how GPS tracking can decrease the fuel costs for your fleet. On a demonstration unit we recently had installed in a fleet, the driver of the truck involved was idling the vehicle for as much as 5 hours a day. Since a tractor burns a gallon of diesel per hour, that added up to a cost of $23.96 per day in unnecessary fuel consumption! Just by telling the driver that this was an issue and that it was being monitored, the driver cut his idling time to less than an hour each day. That is an instant savings of $19.17 per day by simply adding GPS tracking to the fleet. Oh, and for the year, that single truck with GPS tracking, will save $4.984.20. And that does not even include the potential savings with reduced mileage, reduced labor, and improved capitalization on opportunities!

The expense of operating any fleet has almost doubled in the last year do to fuel costs. GPS tracking of your fleet is the only real way to make immediate impacts. The comparative outlay of capital is peanuts compared to the savings your fleet can achieve. In the examples above, the ROI is achieved in the first month!

I cannot think of a better investment or a more clear investment that can have this kind of impact on your bottom line.

Take care and consider calling your congressman to get the government doing something other than taxing us!

Steven Van Ooyen

Chief Technology Officer