Pulling Actionable Insights From Your Fleet Data

Today’s smart commercial trucks generate thousands of data points every day, offering deep dives into fleet operations, routes, driver performance, and more. But without the right tools and knowing where to find this data – and how to process it – this information does little to help you make smarter decisions.

So, how do you fight the “data deluge” to extract the most useful information? Below are three key data categories you should review regularly, as well as example metrics to pull to better understand your fleet’s strengths and areas for improvement. 

1. Driver Duty Status Data 

Some of the hardest data to gather and understand are duty statuses across your fleet. However, properly processed, these data can be a gold mine of good information with real-world impact. The data that you should be looking for are things such as:

How many miles or hours are your drivers using Personal Conveyance?

By breaking down duty status by personal conveyance, you can see if any drivers are abusing this status, which can cost your fleet quite a bit of money when it comes to fuel and wear-and-tear on your truck. Those abusers can either have their access to this status removed or you can provide coaching or information on the company's policy on using the truck in this way. 

What drivers are using the Sleeper Berth status across your fleet?

Not all your drivers will be able to use the Sleeper Berth status due to their daily loads and because most will not have a sleeper cab in the trucks. Those drivers that are using the Sleeper Berth status could be coached to optimize their hours by doing a Sleeper Berth Split. In doing so, drivers can get back hours quicker, which means more effective and optimized driving times. This regulation can be tricky, so ensuring your drivers have all the information to properly conduct a split is very important. 

How many miles or hours are your drivers in the Driving Status?

By keeping an eye on the correlation between hours in driving status and miles driven, you can in some instances identify drivers that need to have their route optimized or coaching provided to them in order to get the most out of their days. This is also a great way to see which drivers in your fleet have hours left over to be able to help with a last-minute load. This can also be a way to identify the drivers that do the most driving and reward them for their dedication. 

How many miles or hours are your drivers using on Yard Moves? 

Yard moves are inevitable for every fleet, but making sure that you are not having excessive yard moves is something that can be tackled. Yard moves can be costly, whether it’s through fuel costs, driving hours, or wear and tear on trucks. If there are hours and miles being wasted consistently on yard moves you may want to look at the configuration of your yard to see if there is a way to make this more efficient and cut down on the time and the distance wasted on these yard moves.

2. Safety Data

Accidents on the road can be dangerous and costly, resulting in damage to vehicles, injuries, and costly lawsuits. By keeping a closer eye on safety data and critical events, you can help reduce the likelihood of accidents by improving training, addressing bad habits before they escalate, rectifying common issues, and ensuring equipment is in top condition.

By looking at your telematics data, you can see trends in things like the occurrence of over-acceleration, following too closely, emergency braking, and roll stability. Example questions you should track regarding safety include:

How many hard braking events are your drivers experiencing? 

A significant and sudden decrease in speed can indicate a close call or a hard braking event. If your data shows certain drivers are experiencing a large number of these events, it could be a sign they need additional training. Reducing the number of hard braking events can help reduce the chances of rear-end collisions. Additionally, hard brakes can be damaging to vehicle equipment, like brake pads and ABS components. Coaching drivers on how to avoid hard braking can extend the life of your trucks.

Are your drivers consistently speeding?

Speeding can increase your drivers’ chances for several serious safety events, including rear-end collisions, jack-knifing, rollovers, and high-speed collisions. High speeds can also cause cargo to shift, causing damage, affecting vehicle performance, and reducing fuel efficiency. Additionally, a fleet with a history of speed-related accidents may face increased insurance premiums, while your drivers may face suspended licenses or be forced to take time off work to attend hearings or mandated training. Staying on top of your repeat offenders can save you and your drivers’ expenses and wasted time.

Are your trucks sending haptic warnings regularly? 

Today’s trucks are equipped with numerous safety features that keep drivers safer on the road, such as lane-keeping assist and blind spot detection. Other measures can track the amount of vibration on a driver’s seatbelt, if the truck is sitting idling on the side of the road, or even if there are objects in the road. The occurrence of haptics alerts can give you insight into whether your drivers might need additional training or coaching to improve fleet safety.

3. Compliance & Maintenance Data

Compliance violations can be costly, in both fines and negative impacts to operations in the forms of trucks off the road and reputation damage. Fleets must manage numerous state and federal regulations, so tapping into real-time fleet data can take the guesswork out of staying compliant. Two of the most important compliance metrics to monitor include hours of service (HOS) and vehicle inspections.

Are your drivers meeting their HOS requirements consistently?

Fleet management tools allow you to easily review the real-time status of every driver, log edits, violations, unassigned drive time, diagnostics, rest times, and more to avoid HOS violations. This can be especially helpful with intrastate routes that might face changing regulations. Additionally, modern telematics tools offer alerts to drivers when they are approaching required rest times to help ensure they can optimize their routes and stay in compliance.

Are your vehicles inspected and road-ready?

Automated reports and easier driver inspections help record defects, capture photos, and collect detailed descriptions of vehicle issues to help maintenance teams troubleshoot problems. Submitting required inspection data is simplified and streamlined, while you can identify areas for preventative maintenance. This helps you schedule your shop time without disrupting routes due to unexpected and costly breakdowns.

Automating Your Approach to Fleet Data

While insights based on real-world and real-time fleet data can be incredibly valuable to your decision-making, training, and operations, the amount of data can become overwhelming. Today’s top fleet management tools offer solutions like PS Analytics to automate your data processing, saving you time and headaches and allowing you to focus on fleet management rather than number-crunching. With intuitive dashboards, automated reports, data filters, and alerts for violations, you can truly make the most of the rich data flowing in from your vehicles.

Fleet data has the potential to greatly improve your operational efficiency and reduce negative impacts on your bottom line from fines, repairs, and poor driving habits. Don’t leave helpful information untapped; instead, take advantage of the rich, real-time data flowing in from the road every day.

‍Learn more about Platform Science’s suite of fleet management software tools, including focused solutions for compliance and telematics.