Data about trucks and drivers is now more accessible than ever before. With a simple plug-and-play connection to a truck engine, technology can now transmit data to a smartphone or tablet that sends it back to a fleet management system for analysis. However, as more data emerges, fleet managers can quickly get stuck at their desks digging into reports to find the source of problems.
According to Melissa Gray, vice president, professional services for XRS Corp., “While reports are critical, it is more ideal to incorporate alerts into fleet operations, allowing managers to manage by exception. This enables fleets to deal with issues quickly and effectively when they arise.
“Consider how an electronic logging program can help fleet operators manage by exception. When first starting out, daily and weekly reports offer important insight into driver behavior and tendencies, showing hours-of-service [HOS] compliance, locations travelled, duty status changes and hours driven or on-duty. This information is useful, but is after-the-fact data that is not immediately actionable.”
Fleet operators should manage with alerts warning when action is necessary—for example, when drive time is low and a driver is near a violation, when a driver has missed a 30 minute break or whether a 16-hour “big day” was used and can’t be used again for another week.
To move to managing by exception, fleets should start by setting baselines on their current metrics that drive business. Some that matter to XRS clients include: HOS compliance; hard brake events; over speeding; engine fault codes; or excessive time at stops.
Then, fleet managers can look at thresholds where action needs to be taken. It’s important to make these thresholds large enough that they warrant action—for example, when a driver idles 15% or more over baseline.
“Managing by exception will lead to more time working on fixing the most mission-critical problems, leading to a much better return on technology investments and a more efficient analysis of available data,” Gray adds.
