When you operate a fleet of vehicles every opportunity to reduce costs and increase productivity must be looked at especially in today’s high competitive delivery, transport and logistic industries.
It’s rare that the fleet and operations manager or administrator will not have some requirement to contact the driver about any changes to the deliveries and pickups on his/her list for the day.
Contacting the driver can of course be done by mobile phone and SMS but they can be a distraction (and a safety issue) whilst they are actually driving on the road.
(The illegal and dangerous way to send instructions to a fleet driver)
If instructions about an amended address for a delivery or a new pickup location needs to be given to the driver, they have to stop the vehicle, grab a pen and piece of paper and then try to write down the correct information and address given verbally over a mobile phone. With all the frustration of asking how do you spell that and repetition of instructions that goes with doing that.
Or even if it sent as a SMS text the address will still need to be entered into the GPS navigation system.
The vastly superior way to improve this process is to send instructions direct to the driver’s navigation device. That way the delivery or pickup address can actually appear in the GPS navigation screen, saving the driver from having to pull over the side of the road and programming it in manually.
This means the driver is more productive with fewer stops and is operating their vehicle safer.
fleetminder offers this very solution through it’s Garmin navigation screen addon for the Platinum NxtG+ devices.
(Garmin screen with fleetminder two-way messaging integration)
Easy messaging with Garmin and fleetminder
The fleet operator can send any type of message to the driver’s Garmin screen including:
- Delivery and pickup address information (stops)
- Changes to deliveries and pickups
- Road hazards
- Special instructions
- Any other information
To send a message, the fleet operator chooses the vehicle from their PC screen and either selects a pre-defined message or writes a custom message. The text message then appears as alert as well as being listed in the Messages box in the menu on the driver’s Garmin screen.
The driver can also respond using pre-defined messages like “Okay”, or “Acknowledged” or by writing a custom message.
The list of pre-defined messages for both the fleet operator and driver can be set and added to anytime.
To have an address appear on the driver’s Garmin navigation screen, the fleet operator simply sends a location message (a stop), saving the driver’s time and reducing the chance of data entry error.
Improve productivity and safety
Reducing the need to directly contact to the driver means fewer distractions (safety) and eliminating them from having to stop the vehicle to lookup new address information, or to having to respond to SMS texts on their mobile phone.
This can save at least 20 minutes a day per driver, and over a week up to 2 hours. And when you have a fleet of vehicles this can translate to a significant wage saving and a boost to productivity.
Suitable GPS tracker models
The Garmin screen add-on is available to any new or previously installed fleetminder Platinum NxtG+ GPS tracker.
For more information please contact us at fleetminder.