Fleet Management and GPS Tracking Blog

The Road to Success: How to Improve Government Vehicle Tracking

Written by Rastrac Team | Dec 15, 2017 7:05:39 PM

When you work for a government department, city, or municipality, your operations management needs may vary when it comes to tracking your government fleet vehicles. Your services and the types of equipment you track vary depending on your area of focus, including police cars and other first responder trucks, construction vehicles, and recycling or other sanitation-related vehicles.

What are the challenges you want to address regarding your job of government vehicle tracking? Many challenges — increasing overhead costs and shrinking department budgets, a lack of accurate or actionable data, inefficient operations, missed sanitation services, and a lack of coverage or overlapping coverage in specific areas — can bog down the effectiveness of your organization. And many of these can be addressed with vehicle tracking solutions.

An effective fleet management system couples powerful management software with the accuracy of global positioning system (GPS) tracking devices to help you manage and monitor your government vehicles. By triangulating the position of your vehicles using orbiting satellites, you can effectively and accurately monitor your operations by knowing where your employees are and providing them with guidance on the road.

Invest in a Reliable Fleet Management System

Fleet management software, in conjunction with reliable GPS tracker devices, can help you to

  • Actively monitor and track a vehicle in real time,
  • Access accurate, up-to-date information,
  • Save time by automating critical daily, weekly, or monthly reports,
  • Monitor vehicle usage and activity,
  • Set vehicle maintenance reminders,
  • Track fuel use and idle times,
  • Optimize driver routes, and
  • Monitor driver behaviors.

Monitor Vehicle Locations and Aid in Vehicle Recovery

An accurate GPS tracking device provides you with the enhanced capabilities of knowing where your vehicles are in real time at all times. You can use these tracking functions for a variety of tasks that will help to promote and increase your operational efficiency. These tracking capabilities also can be used to aid in the recovery of your vehicles should they become lost or stolen.

Use Data to Make Informed, Actionable Decisions

With fleet management software, you can improve the fleet management capabilities of your organization with automated reports that provide detailed information about mileage, vehicle performance, maintenance conditions, and usage. Using the map, you can import custom maps to monitor the location of any of your vehicles with the click of a mouse. This means that if a situation comes up where you need to dispatch the closest vehicle to handle a situation, you can quickly and efficiently determine which vehicle is available to provide coverage.

Manage, Monitor Driver Activities

If you want to know how your drivers are performing or handling vehicles, you can monitor driving speed, acceleration and deceleration rates, routes, turns, and even their arrival and departure times. This can help you to ensure that drivers are using smarter, safer, and more efficient driving practices that protects the reputation of your organization and members of the public on the road. It also can help you to ensure that employee timecards are accurate for cutting down on payroll inaccuracies and overpayments.

Develop and Implement Enhanced Policies, Practices

The job of risk managers within a municipality or other government organization is to assess and identify potential hazards or risks that may affect the organization’s reputation, safety, and security. Using the data reports that can be set to automatically generate, risk managers can use their GPS tracking system to mitigate risks and cut down on human error by developing new safety practices and enhance existing policies. Additionally, the information can be used to aid in ensuring your company and its operators remain within stringent compliance standards. It also can provide an extra layer of protection by providing documented data in the case of a lawsuit.

Reduce Overhead Costs

During a time when many operations managers are trying to find ways to stretch their budgets and reduce overhead costs, an effective fleet management system can help you do just that. Through route optimization and tracking of your government fleet vehicles, you can help drivers spend less time in traffic, thereby reducing idle time, saving on fuel costs, decreasing labor costs, and increasing productivity.