Tracking vehicle hours is important for assessing organizational efficiency. And vehicle tracking is one of the most popular features of telematics solutions. While this is definitely one of the main go-tos, there is much more you can do with the technology. Fleet managers now look to telematics to improve maintenance and servicing, fuel economy, asset utilization, driver behavior, accident rates, fuel economy and more.
An often-overlooked feature of telematics is its ability to accurately track driving hours. As our readers know, in the United States, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) implemented the Hours of Service (HOS) regulation. This regulation limits the number of daily and weekly hours that can be spent driving and working and regulates the amount of time drivers must spend resting between driving shifts.
A Brief Look Back
The purpose of the HOS regulation is to prevent accidents caused by fatigue, and help drivers maintain a natural sleep/wake cycle. The National Safety Council (NSC) has gathered research that shows people are three times more likely to be in a car crash if they are fatigued, and that being awake for more than 20 hours at a time is the equivalent of being legally drunk. Enforcing a limit on the number of hours drivers are on the road greatly reduces the chance of them having an accident.
It is vital for fleets to ensure that their drivers are compliant with this regulation and provide them the means to do so. Not only does failure to keep track of and report hours prevent your drivers from being well-rested and safe, but non-compliance can lead to expensive and unnecessary fines for your company.
Traditionally, paper logbooks were used to track driving hours. Paper logbooks have recently become unpopular as they can be easily manipulated, are subject to human error, make information difficult to find, and are not easily adaptable among other reasons. Other ways of tracking driving hours come in the form Electronic Logging Devices (ELDs) or telematics solutions with ELD capabilities. ELDs are devices that capture driving hours by looking at whether the vehicle is moving, how many miles have been driven and the duration of engine operation.
ELDs are often seen as a great option for small-to-medium fleets. However, now there are so many affordable telematics solutions available that track driving hours just like an ELD does while providing a variety of efficiency, safety and compliance-related features. Both a full-featured telematics solution and ELDs are useful as they automate functions (saving both time and money), have less chance of being tampered with by drivers, and are more accurate.
No matter how you choose to track your driving hours, there are many benefits (aside from compliance) to doing so. Let’s look at some of these.
Solving Overtime Woes
According to Frost & Sullivan, overtime is reduced by 10 to 15% after a fleet management solution has been successfully deployed. By monitoring automated time logs and allocating resources based on real-time insights, overtime can be significantly reduced. For example, if a customer requires a last-minute service or a package delivery late in the day, then the fleet manager can send over the nearest driver. This is based on the driver’s current location (in relation to the task’s location) as well as the amount of hours they’ve already logged. This method prevents calling on a driver that is too far away or too close to going over their maximum allotted hours for the time period. This way drivers are less likely to incur overtime hours, be late to a client or waste unnecessary fuel.
Should a driver need to log a claim for overtime, this can be checked against the captured driving hours and the driver’s location at the time of the claim. This prevents false claims from being logged and increasing your costs unnecessarily.
Better Customer Billing
If you offer a service to customers where you bill them hourly or even by the minute, then ensuring you provide accurate billing every time is essential. Billing customers fairly, based on accurate information, helps keep them satisfied and builds the type of trust that is necessary for long-term relationships.
Remember, retaining customers is much more cost-effective than acquiring new ones! Having a telematics solution that keeps track of driving hours automatically helps you easily figure out exactly how long a driver was with a customer and provide billing accordingly.
This type of system makes the process of billing quicker, saving your company time and potentially getting you your money faster. This process also reduces the need for additional staff to process billing. With the potential for errors in billing now reduced, there is less chance of revenue leakage.
You save costs and can use those savings to provide an even better service to your customers. Should customers question your billing, you can show them a breakdown of costs in black and white, which can result in fewer disputes.
Improving Payroll
There is no doubt about it – timesheet fraud is a reality. Timesheet fraud takes place when drivers get paid for work they never did or for time spent on activities not related to work.
There are a variety of ways this can occur:
- Recording more hours than actually worked.
- Editing driving time retrospectively to cover a deficiency.
- Logging regular time as overtime because it pays more.
Not only does timesheet fraud result in employees getting paid more than they’re entitled to (costing you more money) but your customers get billed incorrectly. It can even weaken employee discipline and morale.
Timesheet fraud seems to occur more in companies where manual processes are used because drivers are essentially left to their own devices without a means to check the accuracy of what was recorded. It stands to reason that the best way to avoid this is with the use of a telematics solution where driving hours are automatically tracked.
A telematics solution can generate reports that provide information on the actual hours that a vehicle is in operation, start and finish times, hours and days worked, and average daily and weekly hours. No matter how you calculate payroll, this method provides data for support. Telematics also assists with classification since trips can be divided into private or business. This feature is especially helpful if drivers use the company vehicle for activities that are not work-related or if they take the vehicle home after they’ve completed their day. This way drivers cannot log private activities as part of work hours to get additional pay or overtime.
To further ensure your drivers do not commit timesheet fraud, drivers should be made aware of the fact that their hours are being tracked with telematics. There is less chance of employees committing timesheet fraud if they know that the hours
Optimizing Fleet Utilization
Using the driving hours data you’re collecting with a telematics solution, you can improve your fleet’s vehicle utilization and, subsequently, your overall efficiency. Vehicle utilization refers to a measurement (typically hours or mileage) to indicate how frequently a vehicle is used within a given time period.
Using the metrics above (these are but a few critical examples) and the driving hours data of each vehicle, you can determine what issues need to be address and proactively managed in the future. You can see whether jobs are being completed within an adequate amount of time, where there are delays at jobs, where drivers take unnecessary detours (for personal errands or because of poor knowledge of routes) and whether certain vehicles are not being used as much as they should be (idling in a depot or inactive at key points in the day).
The outcome of this analysis may help you decide whether you require more or less vehicles, which drivers need to be reassigned to more jobs, whether your fuel efficiency can be improved and much more. The ultimate goal is to ensure that vehicles and drivers only go out when absolutely necessary and that jobs in close proximity of each other get done together to avoid wasting time and fuel.
When your drivers are out and about, it’s difficult to keep track of what’s going on minute by minute. However, with a telematics solution that tracks their driving hours you can easily deduce their actions and take action where needed, at the exact moment it’s needed. As has been demonstrated above, information about driving hours will ultimately help you improve your fleet’s overall safety, efficiency and compliance.