| Fleet Management |
| Written by Helen White | |
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Gone are the days when the commercial vehicle’s mileage logs were completed manually, the missing data was tracked down and the handwritten communication was verified which resulted in wasting of time. Fleet management is the organization of the running of commercial vehicles like trucks, vans and cars. It supports the business of transportation of people and goods. Additional operations like vehicle mortgaging, maintenance, tracking and diagnostics, driver and fuel organizing and safety aspects come in the folds of fleet management. Even the load balancing and commercial vehicle positioning are guided by computers. These functions can be managed by in-house section of the business house or can be outsourced.
Fleet management gives fundamental importance to vehicle tracking system and works with GPS technology. The fleet management software monitors each vehicle’s location, speed and direction by receiving data from additional tracking abilities of the system. Data can be sent to the base station by satellite communication or through terrestrial components. The terrestrial components are basically dependent on location identification methods since the geographical placing of the truck noted as x and y coordinates on a graph at a point of time is the required information. The correctness or economy of the fleet management system is aimed by employing the best location finding technique. Network based location finding relies upon the ways of triangulation of the signal from cell sites supporting the mobile phone. This system uses four parameters to find the location of the vehicle. It uses the cell-id, angle of arrival, time of arrival and the enhanced-observed time difference. The costs are lesser because of the usage of already present cellular towers and base stations. This system can be effectively used in cities where the towers are found. The reflection of transmitting waves over buildings reduces the accuracy of location finding of vehicles by terrestrial network technique. Although costly, satellite tracking is accurate especially when the vehicles travel in the village lacking terrestrial communication facility. Electronically advanced fleet management software maintains their connections to the truck’s onboard device to collect data for the fleet management professional. The software computes the data from fuel consumption and mileage of the truck through the global statistics package. The driver’s profile and efficiency are gauged by merging data from the truck’s onboard device with the vehicle tracking component. The use of fleet management software enables the owner of the business house to manage every operation that goes from vehicle buying to selling. Working trip profile, understanding driver’s profile and monitoring vehicle efficiency are the most wanted requirements of the software. This software has the capability of having remote control like active disabling or geo-fencing of the truck. The quality of hardware fitted in the truck decides the efficiency of the vehicle diagnostic components being informed to the fleet management software. Over-the-air fleet security and control are the latest evolution in fleet management. Irrespective of whether the truck is in operation or stopped for rest, this system can comfortably disable the truck thereby recovering hijacked vehicle or notorious vehicles. The chances of getting back lost cargo are high. This forthcoming section tells about how vehicles can be stopped by remote control from the control center of the fleet management system. It uses remote truck disabling technique to prevent the truck engine from starting, lock the vehicle’s brakes or decelerate the truck by downshifting. The remote disabling systems can also integrate a remote panic and emergency alert system. The driver of the vehicle can alert the control center of an emergency by pressing the panic knob on the dashboard or key-fob panic button when in proximity of the vehicle. The authorized professional of the fleet management studies the situation and disables the truck. The age of the truck or the equipment and the type of usage determine the fuel efficiency and accident risk of the truck. The fleet management ably computes asset lifecycles of trucks using utilization factors, asset age and costing details. To prevent failure of the operational part of the truck or equipment, numbers are assigned to predict the replacement dates of the machinery using the CARCAP modeling resource. The business house has to match its cash flow and purchase of new vehicles in place of aged ones. The financial institutions stipulate ad hoc payments and low funding structures and automatically discourage replacement of aged vehicles. Naturally the maintenance costs of aged fleet go up. Every nation has its stringent law to prosecute the director of Fleet or the driver when road deaths occur involving these commercial vehicles. These road deaths are legally termed ‘unlawful killing’ and the law and order department has the full rights to confiscate the Fleet business house records and computers for investigation, resulting in the downtime of the business. If the director produces proper policies and guidance for their drivers at the job, he/she may be saved from the custodial investigation. The drivers must be in sound knowledge of these terms and conditions before start of work. They must sign up to the policy. The trucks have to be roadworthy and insurance covered. |
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