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One of the most interesting things about vehicle telematics systems is that fleets often purchase them for one very specific function without realizing that telematics has the potential to revolutionize their entire fleet operation.

Such is the case with Tri City Glass and Door, an Appleton, WI-based company that has the Networkfleet telematics system installed in 28 of its trucks. The company, which installs auto, residential and commercial glass from three locations, started to use telematics in order to take control of idling time, only to find that the opportunities to make the fleet operate more efficiently were seemingly limitless.

In fact, fleet manager Larry Bender is still in the middle of the learning process: he keeps discovering so many new applications for the vehicle data he receives from Networkfleet that he can't keep up.

We recently spoke with Bender about his experience with telematics, and here's what he had to say:

Fleet Maintenance: How did you get interested in using telematics?

Larry Bender: It started a couple years ago. We have a lot of service and install vehicles on the road, and it was in the winter and we were out doing a service for a rep for a different telematics company, and he called me up and said, 'You know, while you were fixing our door here, your truck ran continuously for an hour and a half.' Granted, it was in the wintertime, and the installers need to stay warm, but we don't see the employees' cars parked in the parking lot running all day long. If it was one isolated vehicle that wouldn't be so bad, but typically that's not the case.

So we tried a test run with one unit, and the results were good. But it was a system that downloaded when the vehicle came into the yard, so it wasn't 'real-time.' We tried it for a while, to test the waters, and after doing a little research we decided to go with Networkfleet because of the options and the real-time capability.

We track our installers, and their times are all separated on the service orders per location, and that's one of the features that helps us justify or explain the time going to and from a particular job. Occasionally we have a person who calls up and says, 'Well, your guy was only here for a half-hour.' But there's driving time involved that's also incorporated into our service orders, so if a question arises we can pull up a report. And our techs are more accountable and more aware of accurately recording their times per job.

So as we've gotten more and more involved, and as we've gotten more familiar-and we're still learning-we've set our maximum speed at 75 miles an hour. That gives us a little leeway over 65 mph, for passing, but Networkfleet will send us an e-mail to let us know as it's actually happening. All the guys have cell phones, so we give them a call immediately and let them know they need to slow down.

FM: How many vehicles have the telematics units installed?

LB: We have 28 vehicles out of 36 currently with the Networkfleet units on them, and they're a mix of the full-size vans we use for auto glass replacement, chassis cab trucks that we use with larger glass racks on, for our commercial install crews, and some pick-up trucks for our salespeople and project managers. And then there are our service vehicles, which are cube vans and Sprinters.

We put a handful on at one location, then we added another location, and we're continually adding them as we see more and more benefits.

FM: Are you planning any new vehicle purchases in the immediate future?

LB: There's more consideration, but we still have a scheduled replacement guideline for the vehicles, and obviously if one goes down we accelerate that schedule. We are trying to keep things current, and we don't want to have them all aging at the same time.

Like everyone, we're watching where all of the dollars are going, but there are good deals out there right now. We had one vehicle that was scheduled for replacement next year, and there's currently a Dodge Sprinter on a lot that we're looking at replacing that with. We can get a considerably better deal than the previous one that we just bought last year. We're always looking for opportunities.

We've been using the Sprinters as our service vehicles because our techs have a lot of parts on each one, so they're a little bit larger so we can incorporate the racks, plus they can actually stand up inside, whereas a regular van was pretty hard to work out of.

FM: Are specific drivers dedicated to specific vehicles?

LB: They are primarily in the same vehicle. Occasionally they switch around, depending on what they're hauling or what they're doing, but they primarily are assigned.

So there's a sense of ownership, and also, if we switched vehicles between drivers, if there's something that happened to one particular vehicle, you would never know who to ask, because there are different drivers. This way it's easier to keep track.

We have one truck that requires a CDL, and we have a few people who have their CDLs, but there is one primary driver.

FM: Do you outsource your maintenance?

LB: Yes, we do. We have three locations, and we deal with a few different vendors, depending on the vehicle type. Some work better with the gas engines, some with diesel, so we coordinate our maintenance through the local providers. They do a good job for us.

FM: Are there some instances where you need to let your trucks idle while on a job?

LB: Mainly with the auto glass replacements. Typically if we're changing a windshield, that job takes about an hour, hour-and-a-half. But the sealants, to work properly, need to be kept above freezing. And the glass, when it's set against the adhesive, needs to be warm to get the proper bond. So with that in mind, we set our normal service and install trucks at a 15-minute idle time; that's the maximum that we allow before we get an alert. But our auto glass vehicles, in the wintertime, we have bumped out to an hour.

We don't like to see any of the vehicles idling any longer than that. It's just not needed.

The unit doesn't shut off the truck; it sends us an alert via e-mail, and then we'll talk to the driver. There's a handful of people who, it's just the way they've always done things to leave the truck running. It's not their gas money, so I guess they're just weren't in tune with what that actually costs.

FM: Have you quantified how much idle time you've eliminated?

LB: We haven't actually done any tests to get the actual results, but I know from when we first installed the units until now, our alert rate has gone down drastically. In the first few days and weeks, it was almost an hourly thing that we were getting alerts for speeding and maximum idle time. That has been drastically reduced, so I do know that our drivers have a better awareness that we're watching.