Many fleets understand how telematics solutions can benefit fleets, but often managers may be misinformed about how the solutions can be adopted by their fleet if their vehicles vary in age. Numerous solutions can be used by school transporters regardless of the make, model or year, continue reading to learn more.
Why Telematics Solutions Are Important For School Transportation Fleets
Safety is of utmost importance and depends entirely on the decisions that drivers make. However, in some industries, there is even more stress placed upon safety as it can affect the lives of others. When discussing school transportation, this is visible as the driving behaviour and vehicle upkeep can not only affect the life of the driver, but of the students boarding as well.
Safety and Telematics
When addressing fleet safety, telematics can help support drivers with feedback and coaching by implementing driver scorecards, reports and alerts to ensure they know how to make safe driving decisions.
When discussing fleet safety and maintenance management, fleets are turning to systems that monitor and alert teams when maintenance checks or repairs need to happen. This ensures that unexpected breakdowns are drastically decreased and repair turnaround times are increased.
Efficiency and Telematics
Boosting efficiency can help school districts that face tight budgets accomplish more with less. By cutting down on idling time, speeding and inefficient bus routes, more money can be saved to ensure students have adequate transportation to and from school.
While telematics may seem important to be used in all school transportation vehicles, sometimes fleets overlook it. Even though there are varying reasons as to why this is, many are simply misinformed about whether the technological advancements can actually be adopted and implemented.
Why School Transportation Fleets May Initially Overlook New Technologies
It’s not unheard of for school transporters, or any fleet for that matter, to have fleets that include vehicle models of varying years. With tight budgets, school transportation fleets are often seen to purchase new buses to replace older models that are no longer functioning. As a result, fleets have a variety of old and new buses, which in turn seems to cause a concern about whether telematics will be of use for the entire fleet.
This poses the need for teams like GoFleet to share knowledge and insight to all-year inclusive vehicle solutions that fleets with varying makes and models can use.
Finding All-Year Inclusive Vehicle Solutions: Where To Start
As there seems to be miscommunication about model years being a requirement for using telematics solutions, our team has outlined four steps to take when searching for all-year inclusive vehicle solutions:
1. Evaluate Your Fleet Needs
Before purchasing a new system or solutions to implement, managers must evaluate the current tools they have in place, as well their goals with utilizing telematics. Whether it’s to increase safety, lower costs or boost efficiency, these must all be determined to ensure the right solutions are later implemented.
2. Do Your Research On Solutions
With your fleets needs in mind, it’s vital to research and find the right solution amongst the countless ones available while ensuring the age of the vehicle will not affect the success of the implementation. For example, if the priority is to cut down on fuel costs, looking for a solution to reduce idling time and monitoring driver behavior is the way to go. As well, it’s important to keep in mind that there are various solutions that work hand-in-hand with each other, in addition to being all encompassing.
3. Review The Costs Of Implementation
Fleets need to ensure that they make use of every dollar wisely. Setting aside and organizing the budget to adopt telematics may seem difficult, but it will result in great returns on investment.
Systematic maintenance will avoid expensive repairs and result in the buses having longer life spans. Longer vehicle life span will also result from increased safety, and the frequency of school bus accidents will in turn reduce.
Although these telematic solutions can be implemented into the fleet at an affordable rate, agencies like Sourcewell can offer competitively, solicited purchasing contracts to get you these solutions and equipment at a discounted price.
4. Speak With An Experienced Solutions Provider
Implementing telematics into your fleet can seem daunting, but by working with an experienced solutions provider you can rest easy knowing you’re in good hands. Working with GoFleet, an industry leader in this sector, will make the process simple as our team of industry specific specialists will ensure that your fleet receives a custom solution to drive your efficiency, safety and maintenance management as well as increase your ROI. To learn more about the right telematics solution for your fleet, get in touch with our School Transportation Experts.
To read more about the specific telematic solutions that can work for fleets with varying vehicle years, read the continuation in Part Two.