Formula 1 visits Barcelona's Circuit de Catalunya this weekend for the Spanish GP. A key component in helping F1 driver improve their performance is the telemetry data they get back from the F1 car. Telemetry data is just data measuring from a distance. As the drivers are racing around the circuit the engineers in the pits know exactly how the car is performing in realtime.

For example last year at the European Grand Prix in Valencia, Lewis Hamilton found that his tyres were overheating. It was not burning rubber that gave it away. Instead, the news came from the pits, where his engineers monitor the numbers and graphs streaming in from their cars.

Once the driver has returned they can analysis the data to see exactly how they performed and what they can improve on. As a result drivers are able to shave fractions of a second off their lap times. These, aggregated over a typical race’s 50 or so laps, can make the difference between winning and losing.

The same ideas from F1 can also be applied to commercial vehicle fleets - modern GPS tracking and telemetry systems can provide details on how drivers are braking and accelerating. Improvments in driving behaviour can help improve wear and tear on the vehicle and improve fuel efficency.

The VW Caddy Racer claimed its title of fastest van in Ireland when it set a new course record for Commercial Vehicles in Mondello last month.

Powered by a 4-cylinder, 16-valve 2.0 litre engine, it matched and even beat many of the times set by conventional racing cars at Mondello

The VW Caddy Racer which has been taking part in the VW Cup for the last few years and is driven by  Volkswagen Commercial Vehicle Director Simon Elliot, has been a very popular entry with the race goers with its distinct van shape racing around the course.

Now that commercial vehicle owners know this is it going to be a popular choice? From our experience you don’t exactly need to have the fastest commercial vehicles to break through the speed limits on Irish roads!

While it may be cool to claim to have a fleet of the fastest vehicles to deliver your services on time, will fleet managers be spending half their time trying to slow these guys down!

Conventional ways of slowing down your fleet are through the use of speed limiters and GPS Fleet Management Systems.

It would be interesting to know how many VW Caddy Racers will be sold with limiters fitted!

Leo Varadkar has announced a new round of funding for more than a hundred projects to improve road, bus, cycle and pedestrian infrastructure in Dublin & surrounds
.
Funding of €11.8 million has been set aside for the upgrades. Unfortunately Commercial fleet owners will not be the ones to benefit from this round  of funding as it is mainly aimed at public transport and pedestrians / cyclists. Here is what Minister Varadker had to say

“This Government is committed to investing in public transport and encouraging more sustainable ways of travelling. The projects range in size from large-scale junction changes to small-scale pedestrian crossings, but each will make a real difference in the community,” Minister Varadkar said.

“This investment shows that real progress can be made, even in difficult times. It’s important that the Government does what it can to encourage more people to take the bus, train, Luas or bike to work, school or college and to make walking more attractive for short journeys. That’s what this investment is all about. For the first time in recent history, the Government is investing more in public transport, cycle and walking routes than in new roads.”

The funding is being allocated to 110 projects some of the highlights below:

Dublin City Council

· €2 million to resurface key bus and cycle routes;
· €1 million for the next phase of upgrading for the Thomas Street/James’s Street QBC.

Kildare
· Overall funding of €2.46 million, including €1.1 million for new roadside footpaths around the county

Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown
· Overall funding of €1 million, including €600,000 to improve the junction and signalling at the junction of Upper Kilmacud Road and Blackthorn Junction, including new cycle facilities and better access for walkers and cyclists to Sandyford Luas stop;

South Dublin County Council
· Overall funding of €1.1 million, including €200,000 for preliminary design work for a cycle route from Griffeen Way to Fonthill Road, and construction work on incomplete sections of cycle tracks on Willsbrook Road;
· €470,000 for other cycle projects, and further funding for new pedestrian crossings.

Fingal
· €1 million to upgrade the N3 Mulhuddart interchange;

Meath
· Overall funding of around €1 million, including €200,000 to provide new bus stops and upgrade existing ones on the Grange Rath to Mosney route;
·
Wicklow
· Overall funding of €815,000, including €150,000 to design a new transport interchange at Bray Dart station and provide better facilities for pedestrians, taxis and cyclists;

The HSA have recently published some really good material on their website in relation to daily checks that employers need to implement and monitor within their organisations and their fleets.
 
They have laid out the information for all types of vehicles:

Heavy Goods Vehicles
Light Commercial Vehicles
Buses
Cars

In each section there is a video clearly outlining the necessary steps, a poster to distribute throughout the workplace and also a recommended daily checklist for each driver to perform and confirm before they start their workday. They also encourage each fleet to take this checklist and customise to their own fleet and requirements

Sample Items:

• Good visibility for driver through all cab windows and mirrors. All required mirrors fitted and adjusted correctly

Having recently met and spoken with someone involved in the transport section in the HSA, this is an area that they are focusing heavily on within organisations and are encouraging the use of technology like GPS Fleet Management systems within organisations to monitor and improve safety of drivers and roadworthiness of the commercial vehicles they use.

As an example, a recent European wide road safety initiative that was featured on RTE’s Crimecall recorded 100 offences during routine roadside checks on just over 450 vehicles. 3 of these vehicles were deemed not roadworthy and not allowed to continue their journey that day.

Sample check sheet below, visit HSA website for more info.

Could you get better results from your fleet with smarter management and statistics? We think you could.
 
Moneyball, an excellent film starring Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill is the true story of how the Oakland A’s, a team on a tight budget used statistics to beat the biggest spenders in baseball.
 
They ruled out paying big money for all rounders or players with the right experience or aesthetics and simply concentrated on the statistics of individual positions.

Personally I know more about football... My understanding is that Liverpool are trying to adopt this strategy in the Premier league under their new owners, but it hasn’t exactly worked yet.

There are some really interesting premier league stats from the season so far (today is the 13th of April). Here are some examples:

Interesting that Wolves (bottom of the league have had to make the most saves!)

Yakubu... Despite being in a team struggling in the league and being the oldest of the other top scorers, his goal/shot ratio is the best in the league, how could Blackburn get the ball to him more?

 
The only stat the Manchester United lead in from all the data gathered is shooting accuracy (apart from points in the league!). As they are leading the league, perhaps this is an important number. I would like to see this spread out over a few seasons to know if it means anything.

So how does this relate to you? Well at the moment we are not sure. Whilst all of our customers have one thing in common, vehicles or machinery out working, they are all playing different games! So we need to work closely with each customer to know what numbers matter to their fleet and the improvements that will be made.

We do this through our fleet analysis process:

We use our fleet analysis process to work out what are the key metrics for your fleet and how we need to measure them and improve them. It is always interesting to see what an impact a comprehensive fleet analysis can have, in some cases companies we talk to are leaving hundreds of thousands of euro on the table.

If you would like us to take a look at your fleet performance numbers, please do not hesitate to contact us

Transpoco GPS tracking

Could you get better results from your fleet with smarter management? We think you could.

Moneyball, an excellent film starring Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill is the true story of how the Oakland A’s, a team on a tight budget used statistics to beat the biggest spenders baseball.

They ruled out paying big money for all rounders or players with the right experience or aesthetics and simply concentrated on the statistics of individual positions.

Personally I know more about football... My understanding is that Liverpool are trying to adopt this strategy under their new owners, but it hasn’t exactly worked yet.

There are some really interesting premier league stats from the season so far (today is the 13th of April). Here are some examples:

Interesting that Wolves (bottom of the league have had to make the most saves!)

Yakubu... Despite being in a team struggling in the league and being the oldest of the other top scorers, his goal/shot ratio is the best in the league, how could Blackburn get the ball to him more?


The only stat the Manchester United lead in from all the data gathered is shooting accuracy (apart from points in the league!). As they are leading the league, perhaps this is an important number. I would like to see this spread out over a few seasons to know if it means anything.

So how does this relate to you? Well at the moment we are not sure. Whilst all of our customers have one thing in common, vehicles or machinery out working, they are all playing different games! So we need to work closely with each customer to know what numbers matter to their fleet and the improvements that will be made.

We do this through our fleet analysis process:

We use our fleet analysis process to work out what are the key metrics for your fleet and how we need to measure them and improve them. It is always interesting to see what an impact a comprehensive fleet analysis can have, in some cases companies we talk to are leaving hundreds of thousands of euro on the table.

If you would like us to take a look at your fleet performance numbers, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Transpoco GPS tracking

The Irish Prison Service have recently issued a tender notice for monitoring using satellite tracking of prisoners on temporary release.

A spokesman for the Irish Prison Service said the contract would allow for a maximum of 50 low-risk prisoners to be tracked and monitored while on temporary release.

The tracking is usually done by a waterproof bracelet or ankle attached device. 

By monitoring the GPS devices, the prison service could know a prisoner's whereabouts at all times and restrict them to certain areas such as home and work, and could prohibit them from other areas such as schools and childcare centres

GPS Prisoner tracking has been popular in the USA since the mid 2000s. In 2005 one hundred state and local jurisdictions were reportedly using GPS to track nonviolent juvenile offenders.

By and large, it isn't the most dangerous inmates who are getting GPS anklets. It's the least dangerous ones. They're the first to be let out of jail when money and space run low.

1. Remove idling
2. Improve driving style
3. Reduce/remove navigation errors
4. Reduce remove any private mileage
5. Reduce/remove management errors

Barry has recently written a piece on idling, without re producing everything from his blog post: How to reduce idling.

Anyway this post highlights that there is absolutely no point in leaving an engine running for any period of time.

2: Improve driving style

Harsh braking, rapid acceleration, over revving, wrong gear selection, the list goes on. A poorly driven vehicle can increase fuel consumption by up to 20% in some vehicles.
A perfect example of this is the time Jeremy Clarkson on Top Gear raced a BMW M3 behind a Toyota Prius as seen in the video below. If you think there is room for improvement in your vehicles, just drop us an email and we can show you how we can help you get a handle on this.

3: reduce remove navigation errors

We have all been lost at some point in time and driven all around the houses looking for our destination.
Do you ever wonder what percentage of your fleets mileage is as a result of this sort of lost driving?
I wonder about this too. It would actually make a great little piece of research. I could take something like 1000 journeys, examine them and work out what how many journeys have navigational errors (I could work this out by looking at their route replay).

It would probably be sector specific as I cant imagine vehicles with fixed routes would have many errors, but service vehicles or sales vehicles must have loads.
If anyone else is interested in this research please let me know. If there is enough interest I will organise something.

4: Remove private mileage

This is often more of a HR issue, but there is a lot of money on the table in reducing or removing private mileage.
It might be a place to go to look for savings. The options I have seen with our customers are as follows:

• Complete ban. Do not use the vehicle outside of work related tasks
• Cap mileage, for instance 200km per month is allowed. Anything over this and the employee must pay for it
• Reimbursement for private mileage: Employees must pay for any mileage they do in the company vehicle.

We recently started trading in Norway, and we have found one of the biggest drivers in the GPS tracking market there is the need to prove that company vehicles are not used privately. The revenue commissioners in Norway visit football matches or supermarkets on the weekend looking for commercial vehicles. They take pictures of the vehicles, and note the registration. Then on Monday morning they show up with a VAT bill for the company and a benefit in kind bill for the driver. Good idea to raise extra tax, but nobody like more tax.

5. Remove management errors:

This week I spoke to a potential customer who excellently articulated this problem. He says they strive to provide excellent customer service, so when a customer asked for a small delivery in Westport count Mayo, that had to be there the next day, he rearranged his whole dispatch plan to accommodate this customer. Currently he has no GPS tracking system and no way of easily looking back at these kind of incidents.
Now when he has he Transpoco GPS tracker installed he will be able to look at these sort of abnormalities and calculate the costs. Displaying these at his monthly management meetings will spell out to the rest of the directors in the team how much money they are wasting in being too flexible.

Putting a cost on these sort of decisions is the best way to think about them logically and to start putting policies and procedures in place to protect the company from this sort of loss in the future. For this particular case, I do not know how they could have avoided the incident, but surely there must be something that could be done in the future to help them avoid or minimise the issue.

Anyway that sums up my current thoughts on the 5 easiest ways to remove fuel consumption. I will add more to this over the next couple of months. If you want to be included on our mailing list just let us know.

Leo Varadkar, minister for transport has published a new bill yesterday (5th of April 2012) regarding the testing roadworthiness of commercial vehicles. The bill comes on the back of a study that the RSA commissioned PwC to conduct.

The highlights of the bill are as follows:

• Responsibility is transferring from local authorities to the RSA
• Testing centers and licensing of authorised test centres
• New powers will be put in place to carry out roadside inspections and also inspections of commercial operators premises
• A “risk register” will be introduced that will rank operators based on risk

As Fuel prices continue to rise for Ireland’s motorists keeping a close eye on your fleets fuel cost is essential.

The national average prices for March 2012 were; Petrol:165.9c , Diesel:161.9c

Fuel Cards enable you to monitor accurately how much you are spending on fuel and where and when your staff are filling up. They are the most common way of monitoring fuel used in relation to kilometers driven.

Lots of companys now offer their own branded Fuel Cards and can offer some reductions on the advertised forecourt price. For example AA Ireland has teamed up with Topaz to provide a free fuel card for their mambers. The card guarantees 2 cent off per litre at any of the 320 Topaz service stations in the Republic of Ireland

While on their own fuel cards will not reduce your fuel spend significantly, the major savings scan be generated by making good use of the data they provide. 

With Transpoco's Fleet Management solution the administrative burden of monitoring fuel cards data can be reduced. Our system makes it easy to get an analysis of your Fuel Cards information.

Find which vehicles are spending the most on Fuel.

See which Drivers are filling up most often.

See which stations are more expensive to fill up at.

Find if non authorised vehicles have been filled up with Fuel.  

For more information on our Fuel Card Management system visit www.transpoco.ie