TR Footnotes 0511 : Page 1

TOWING & RECOVERY May 2011 Keeping industry pros on their tows tow Partners ADVISOR Now FOOTNOTES Month ® Every www.trfootnotes.com Using top-notch technology to track your tow trucks TomTom Business Solutions J.C. Clark of J.C. Towing in San Diego, CA, uses his TomTom fleet management system to improve productivity, reduce costs, and boost his bottom line By Allan T. Duffin It all exists now — the equivalent of air traffic control for tow truck com-panies: amazing software that encour-ages your operators to drive more PRST STD U.S. POSTAGE PAID PEORIA, IL PERMIT NO. 315 Volume 21, Number 13 © 2011 Dominion Enterprises. All Rights Reserved. ❘ $3.95 Towing & Recovery Footnotes ® 10 Bokum Rd. Essex, CT 06426 safely and helps them avoid heavy traffic in order to reach their destina-tions via the most efficient route. And that’s just for starters. More and more towing companies are installing the latest tracking sys-tems for their fleets. These systems use GPS and everyday communications devices such as the smart phone you already have. Or if you want to go upscale, you can install fancier items like mobile data terminals (MDTs) in your tow trucks. A tow truck tracking system is in everyday use at Henry’s Wrecker Service in Washington, D. C ., which uses a fleet management system man-ufactured by TomTom Business Solu-tions of C oncord, Massachusetts. “Our dispatchers are just like air traffic controllers now,” said Fred Scheler, president and C EO of Henry’s Wrecker Service. “With two 46-inch flat-screen TVs in dispatch, we can very easily see the location of cus-tomers and drivers, so our dispatchers can assign the closest truck and give the customer an accurate estimate for arrival. By traveling fewer miles to each call, we have saved $40,000 per month in fuel costs and our drivers can get to more calls every day.” That’s a positive pitch for tracking systems for the towing and recovery industry — but will these products work for you and your towing needs? Real-Time Visuals C urrently a variety of vendors sup-ply tracking systems. These vendors See TRACKING TRUCK S , page 3

Tracking Trucks

Allan T. Duffin

It all exists now — the equivalent of air traffic control for tow truck companies: amazing software that encourages your operators to drive more safely and helps them avoid heavy traffic in order to reach their destinations via the most efficient route. And that’s just for starters. More and more towing companies are installing the latest tracking systems for their fleets. These systems use GPS and everyday communications devices such as the smart phone you already have. Or if you want to go upscale, you can install fancier items like mobile data terminals (MDTs) in your tow trucks. A tow truck tracking system is in everyday use at Henry’s Wrecker Service in Washington, D.C., which uses a fleet management system manufactured by TomTom Business Solutions of Concord, Massachusetts. “Our dispatchers are just like air traffic controllers now,” said Fred Scheler, president and CEO of Henry’s Wrecker Service. “With two 46-inch flat-screen Tvs in dispatch, we can very easily see the location of customers and drivers, so our dispatchers can assign the closest truck and give the customer an accurate estimate for arrival. By traveling fewer miles to each call, we have saved $40,000 per month in fuel costs and our drivers can get to more calls every day.” That’s a positive pitch for tracking systems for the towing and recovery industry — but will these products work for you and your towing needs? Real-Time Visuals Currently a variety of vendors supply tracking systems. These vendors Include Beacon, Fleet Matics, Ranger SST, Teletrac, TowITsystems, tow Xchange, Tracker Management, Transportation Information Systems, and U.S. Fleet Tracking. Tracking systems can do amazing things these days. Bruce Carucci of Tow IT systems listed just a few more of the advanced features found in the latest systems: monitoring PTO use, idling time, odd-hours vehicle use, reporting engine diagnostic fault codes, stop time, plus geo-fencing of locations, tracking employee work hours, dispatch and two-way text, and monitoring any voltage or switch in the vehicle, even aiding in stolen truck recoveries. And there are many more features available, all contributing to a revolution in towing and recovery business and dispatching efficiencies. The ability to track a company’s tow trucks is critical to running an efficient towing business, said Michael Geffroy, vice president of sales for Tom Tom.The 20-year-old company manufactures the WORK smart fleet management system, which integrates tracking with navigation and dispatch capabilities.All towers want to know where their drivers are so they can send the closest truck to service their customers,” he explained. The beauty of a computerized tracking and navigation system is that it provides an at-a-glance, real-time visual of what’s happening out on the road. According to TomTom’s Geffroy, “you can just look on the map to see which operator is the closest to the customer and send them clear instructions directly into the cab. The driver simply accepts the job and the navigator provides turn-by-turn directions during their journey.” Such systems can also save valuable hours during the workday.You’re not wasting time with wrong addresses,” explained Geffroy, “so you can get to more customers every day.” And, he added, tow truck drivers arrive at their destinations more quickly, which ensures a satisfied and loyal customer base. Tow Xchange, based in Chattanooga, TN, offers another fleet tracking product called Budget GPS. According to Jeff Pesnell, vice president of tow Xchange, “Budget GPS is primarily focused on the location of the fleet or vehicle but also includes features such as current vehicle location, vehicle location history (the ‘bread crumb trail’), [and] notification of vehicles which are stopped.” The product can also create reports for items such as driver distance, speeding, and stops. Saving Data The ability to watch vehicle positions in real time “is helpful if you need to send a truck to a location, or you don’t know where your tow trucks are,” explained Todd Follmer, CEO of inthinc, a company based in Salt Lake City, Utah. “On the display we capture locations every 15 seconds and we send it to your desktop computer every minute. So, minute by minute, you know where all of your vehicles are.” Follmer cited an example: “We received notification that one of our clients was involved in a two- or three car accident.” Initially it looked like the client was at fault and would be on the hook for several thousand dollars’ worth of damage. However, because of the tracking system installed in the client’s truck, “we were able to go back and prove that the accident was not related to our customer’s driving behavior,” said Follmer. The grateful client paid inthinc the ultimate compliment: The tracking system, said the client, saved the company — a small business — from having to close its doors. Follmer also noted that the tracking system helps in cases where tow truck drivers are pulled over for driving too fast. “If the driver is unjustly accused of speeding, we have data that will exonerate him or her in those instances as well,” he said. Driver Behavior Today’s sophisticated fleet management systems also include the ability to track the driver’s behavior on the road, said Geffroy. “For example, every time an operator speeds or harshly brakes or turns, he’s costing the owner money, in maintenance, in fuel, and in exposure. Everyone knows that bad operators wear out brakes four times faster than good operators. And sooner or later, he’s going to have an accident, and that’s going to cost you money in repairs and raise your insurance rates.” According to Follmer, inthinc’s tracking system shows, in general, that tow truck operators drive over the speed limit 20 to 40 percent of the time, and fail to wear their seat belt 20 to 30 percent of the time. “There’s also a high ratio of hard verticals and hard braking events that correspond to drivers going over the speed limit,” said Follmer. At inthinc, the primary focus of the products is on driver behavior. “So in real time you have a device that will coach your driver to be a better driver,” explained Follmer. “We focus on those behaviors that are going to lead to accidents or lead to damage to the tow truck or to the tow vehicle.” Inthinc’s system tracks specific driver actions, including the number-one cause of accidents: excessive speed. To encourage drivers to stay at or below the speed limit, inthinc’s system uses an accelerometer to track the truck’s movements on the road. Potentially dangerous movements include hard acceleration, hard turns, and hard braking — all logged by the system. Limiting Damage The inthinc system also looks for “hard verticals” — when a tow truck blasts through an intersection too quickly, or enters or leaves a parking lot too fast. Again, driver behaviors like these can damage the tow truck or the “The day we turn on the mentoring [system], we see an immediate change,” said Follmer. Among the improvements noted were an increase in the wearing of seatbelts (up 10 percent) and a significant reduction in adverse driving incidents. “The change in behavior is cut and dry,” he noted.“There’s not a lot of subjectivity to it, because you can see it in the data.” By keeping drivers to the speed limit, fleets using inthinc’s tracking system are seeing a 10 percent increase in miles per gallon. Drivers are using less fuel, saving money for the towing companies. By setting speed caps and tracking this information, added Geffroy, towing companies can reduce the chances their operators will have accidents. The Companies can then provide this data to their insurance companies to negotiate lower rates. Latest Technology Portability is critical. Current tracking systems allow the towing company to track its fleet from any location with Internet access. “Our customers have used this feature to check on overnight crews before going to sleep,” said Geffroy, “or logging in first thing in the morning to see if any on-call drivers responded to emergencies during the night so they could make any required staffing adjustments.” Jim Shellhaas, president of Ranger SST (Service Solutions Technology) in Cleveland, Ohio, describes their product as “an integrated dispatching, messaging, and GPS tracking and mapping solution.” Shellhaas has an interesting perspective on the subject: “that the concept of ‘tracking,’ while great and helpful, is an idea that is already in the past.” Newer, more powerful systems combine the traditional GPS tracking function with mobile messaging — for example: call status, vehicle information, and pricing — and integrate it with dispatching and business management (account pricing and invoicing, for example). Jim Weaver, founder of Tracker Management Systems, Inc., encourages towers to think about integration, rather than stand-alone solutions, to obtain the best results. Weaver said that the biggest benefit of tracking a fleet with GPS and Mobile Data Terminals (MDTs) “is the total integration of calls with locations and trucks with the location plus status of the vehicles closest to the call.” With “total integration,” continued Weaver, “the desired benefits of this type of investment greatly improves, because now not only do you have fuel savings and history of what drivers are doing and when, but greatly enhanced dispatching capacity as well.” Processing Info According to Shellhaas, a critical question for towing companies is whether the tracking application they’re using integrates effectively with the rest of their business needs. A tracking system, said Shellhaas, should work seamlessly with a company’s mapping, dispatching, mobile messaging, and business management functions. Without this, he believes that towing companies are simply purchasing various products that don’t talk to each other — “buying a four-cylinder Chevy when they should be getting a turbo-Charged Porsche at the same price. At towXchange, the Budget GPS tracking system integrates with the company’s TOPS dispatch software in order to display pending call information as well as in-process calls being Worked. “This integration offers tow company dispatchers a visual of the location of their vehicles as well as the location of pending tows and location/ destination information of tows being worked,” explained Pesnell.This, added Pesnell, allows for a more informed driver/truck assignment. “In addition to Budget GPS,” said Pesnell, “towXchange integrates with many of the mainstream GPS fleet tracking providers. Features range from simple fleet tracking to included in-cab terminals to connected GPS mapping appliances with a full range of reports which are exportable and available for e-mail.” In addition to real-time tracking of their tow truck fleets, companies can also track vehicle traffic more effectively.TomTom’s product “uses data on the traffic flow of millions of anonymous mobile phone users and connected TomTom devices to determine exactly where, in which direction and at what speed all these mobile phone users are traveling throughout the road network,” said Geffroy. With this system, continued Geffroy, the user receives detailed incident reports about the length and reason of the delays, the most accurate delay information, travel and arrival times, and alternative route proposals. Down the road, Pesnell predicts several new wrinkles in the world of tracking. Connected GPS appliances (from vendors such as Garmin, TomTom, and the like) are fairly new,” he said, “and you may see the addition of vehicle on-board cameras bundled with GPS products.” In addition, said Pesnell, mapping is improving and he’s seeing features such as integrated traffic and weather. * * * * Shellhaas sees two key advances for the near future: 1. Towing operations will become more mobile — with “more diverse, more powerful, more robust, and more affordable devices.” 2. There will be more “intelligent” dispatch for tow companies and motor clubs. For example, AAA “is assigning calls not based on a ‘company-driven’ algorithm [calling a specific towing company], but based on the availability of the right equipment [truck type] that is in closest proximity to a new service request [stranded motorist, overturned truck, etc.]. The company operating the truck is a secondary consideration.”

Publication List
Using a screen reader? Click Here