Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) is a helpful tool when locating vehicles in real time. Fleet managers often use these tools during the day to see where their vehicles may be at any given time. When this data is used with proper geofencing alerts, fleet managers get even more data for simplification of fleet management. Geofencing alerts can immediately inform fleet manager if a vehicle is being misused, if the driver is running behind, track arrivals and departures and much more.
What Exactly Is Geofencing
A geofence is a virtual boundary around a geographic area. An AVL system will notify the fleet manager if that driver enters and/or exits the geofenced area. Geofences can be set via a defined radius around a specific address or geolocation, such as a customer address, company headquarters or can be virtually drawn on a map around a specific area such a certain part of town, cities, states and more.
Ways to Use Geofencing
There are many ways to use geofencing functions, however, here are several ways we have seen our customers use them that helped them run a more efficient fleet.
- Geofence Your Station or Headquarters
Setting a virtual boundary around the company headquarters or station where the truck is domiciled can provide many benefits. Every time vehicles leave in the morning to perform their duties, as well as arrive at the end of the day will create a time and date stamp. With this data, it is easy to tell how long each vehicle has been on the road, and if the vehicle departed and arrived when the driver stated they did. This creates an ease of administrative burdens, service utilization as well as create a way to track working hours if the driver is paid on an hourly basis. It is also an easy way to tell unauthorized usage in case the vehicle is being used after hours or on off-days for non-related events.
- Geofencing of Customer Locations
Many of our clients geofence individual customers, which can be done manually in V-Track or through a system upload. Geofencing customers is beneficial because arrival and departures at customer sites are automatically tracked. This can create ease of administration when measuring how long your vehicle may spend at a customer location versus driving. It can also create better customer service by notifying your customer service rep exactly where the vehicle may be currently and when they will depart to head to the next customer and much more. Chain of custody can also be reported with this functionality without any driver interaction.
- Geofencing of Service Areas
Vehicles will often have specific areas where they operate. This can be specific parts of town, entire states, certain regions of the country or the entire continent. When creating geofences around specific service areas for specific vehicles, it is easy to immediately know if a vehicle has been stolen or is being used on an incorrect route for unauthorized service use. Having this information immediately can help fleet managers take immediate corrective action.
- Geofencing Trouble Areas for Specific Vehicles
Many of our customers share with us that they always have several drivers in a fleet that may need more attention than others. V-Track allows geofences to be created that apply to specific vehicles and notify the appropriate fleet or driver manager of their action. The use case for this feature can be geofencing a driver’s favorite lunch spot where they may spend too much time, a competitor’s business, or any other desired location. V-Trackallows for geofence alerts to be set and delivered to the fleet manager via email or a text message notifying them of an entry and/or exit of a specific geofence for a specific vehicle allowing for corrective action to be taken.
GPS tracking with geofencing is a beneficial tool that can help fleet managers and driver managers simplify and improve fleet management and improve your customer experience. Please contact us for more information on V-Track with V-Track Video. We would be happy to share our experience and demonstrate our extensive capability.