Is Working After Hours The Best For Your Fleet?

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s (USDOT) Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) is funding a pair of studies conducted by a Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York and the Florida Department of Transportation to evaluate the cost-benefit of nighttime and off- hour deliveries and pick-ups.

Finding new solutions to combat the ever increasing local traffic and congested city roads is crucial to the productivity and time sensitive operations demanded from customers. GPS tracking software has been helping fleets navigate through traffic in many different road conditions at all hours of the day and night.

Carriers that use GPS tracking also keep their costs down, their deliveries on time, and their drivers happy. GPS tracking software’s primary feature is to give managers a real-time display of their vehicles’ locations. Teletrac’s Fleet Director Software offers the tool Multi-map Tile View that goes a step further by making it easy to see up to 20 different locations at the same time without toggling back and forth between separate screens. Have more than twenty vehicles? Simply drag and drop vehicles into the display in order to choose which twenty to view. Switch between single and multiple views and replay incidents at will. A good overview of where a fleet’s vehicles are and what they are doing makes clear, strategic management easier.

GPS technology is great for navigating as well. With the Send Route feature, managers can send new routes, complete with detailed directions, to drivers who are already on the road. Send Route is great for last-minute assignment changes and selecting the shortest routes to reduce drive time. The feature results in more flexible and efficient dispatch and faster, more reliable service.

Two-way Messaging helps drivers communicate with dispatch. Templates and preset “canned” messages make it easy to send common messages without having to retype the same words over and over. Free-form messages work the same way as ordinary texting—except that Two-way Message automatically turns itself off when the vehicle is in motion, to help prevent distracted driving. This feature makes management as a whole more efficient and flexible and they also allow drivers to call in if road conditions or other problems occur.

Carriers that utilize a GPS tracking system with routing, mapping, and two-way messaging tools, experience efficient, cost-effective operations, no matter the time of day.