Equipment World Digital Magazine
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moving down the road. Armed with this knowledge, you can speed up material delivery to keep the paver moving, or slow things down to prevent choke points. Real-time monitoring of mate- rial trucks will also help you gauge asphalt plant output. If your trucks are caught up in traf- fic, you can make adjustments to their routes based on traffic infor- mation and avoid congestion. In addition to real-time tracking of assets during a job, you can use your geofence to count cycle times (as trucks move in and out of an area). Compiling accurate estimates of how many loads it takes to complete a particular job will help you create much more accurate and competitive esti- mates for future bids. Location data will also help your service technicians find equipment when they go into the field. On a large highway or civil engineering job, machines are often stretched out over many miles. Using telematics, the techs and fuelers can go straight to the machine requiring service, rather than wasting valuable time hunt- ing for it. For property tax purposes, location data can also be used to verify where the equipment is kept, or working. If your offices are in a high tax state, but you have substantial assets working out of state, you may be able to use this information to reduce your property tax bill. Run time Run time data is a simple mea- surement that tracks when the equipment is turned on and when it's turned off. This allows you to set up simple curfews for your machines. If somebody cranks up a machine that should not be running before or after work hours, you can set up your telematics system to send you an alert. Or, you can get more so- phisticated, and actually disable the starter during specific hours. Short term, run time can also serve as a time card. If a driver says he started work at 7 a.m., but the truck didn't crank until 8 a.m., you may want to investigate. But the greatest benefits of having your run time data come from compiling it and using it as a scorecard. If you know to- the-minute how many machine hours it took to complete a specific job, or move a specific amount of material (and how much fuel you burned), you'll be able to craft much more ac- curate bids for future jobs. That information can also be used to schedule maintenance and help your operations people forecast job completion dates. Long term, you can compile run time data into a spreadsheet and glean useful insights into your equipment utilization. It's a well-established fact that site supervisors sometimes ask for more machines than they need because, in a pinch, they may need that extra machine. With a history of run time data, fleet managers are in a better position to argue for fewer machines. Low utilization rates can trigger ben- eficial conversations about jobsite organization, or the feasibility of using rental equipment instead of company-owned assets. It's not unheard of for construc- tion companies to reduce their utilization as much as 10 to 15 percent using telematics data. This not only means you use fewer machines to do the same amount of work, but also that all the costs associated with owner- ship (including insurance and bonding) go down as well. Fuel burn At the end of the day, knowing which machines need refueling, and which do not, can be a huge time saver for your fueling opera- tions or fuel provider. Some fleet managers even leverage that data with their fuel vendors to negoti- ate better prices. Fuel burn statistics can also be an excellent indicator of engine lube oil condition, and help you establish a more accurate, condi- tion-based maintenance program. Most contractors change lube oils on an hourly basis, 250 or 500 hours typically. But, if you have a machine in heavy applications burning above-normal levels of diesel, you may want to consider changing that machine's lube oil ahead of schedule, or at least keep it on a watch list for more frequent oil sampling. And since fuel is almost always the biggest operating expense in earthmoving, keeping accurate records of fuel burn can give you valuable job costing data for competitive bidding purposes. Some contractors are even taking their fuel consumption data to their equipment dealers and us- ing it to bargain for better prices – especially when they can prove that a particular brand and model of machine consumes more fuel than a comparable model from a competitor. February 2016 | EquipmentWorld.com 42 telematics | continued Daniel Samford, CEM, of Peak Performance Asset Services, consults in fleet management, telematics integration and negotiations for special- ized construction equipment, annual vehicle purchases, national accounts and fleet value evaluations. With 21 years at Herzog Companies of St Joseph, Missouri, Samford operated in 12 divisions and managed a fleet of more than 2,800 units and 700 vehicles. He can be contacted through his website www.PPASllc.com or emailed at dsamford@PPASllc.com.