Data is everywhere. There are seemingly countless devices and analytics that can measure everything that happens to your fleet, from fault codes and failures to fuel efficiency and tire pressure. If there’s something you want to measure, you won’t have to look hard to find a solution that can do the job for you.
The real advantage comes in what you do with that data. Anyone can look at the raw numbers, but using the data in ways that can improve your fleet’s performance is what can separate a successful fleet from the pack.
After years of compiling this kind of data, telematics providers have more knowledge of what to do with each fault code that comes in. They track information and have years of evidence on what happens to certain trucks at specific intervals, which means they can make reasonable assumptions about what will happen to similar trucks in the future.
To enhance their integration capabilities as much as possible, Geotab has partnered with a plethora of companies across the trucking industry, the logic being that the more companies with which you work, the better access you have to data—and not just to the data itself, but also what it means. We spoke with Scott Sutarik, Geotab’s associate vice president of commercial vehicle solutions, on the subject, and he says that Geotab makes the information available so that third parties, be it a fleet or an OEM, can enhance the data.
“It’s all about getting the data, being able to share it and then enrich it, so the customer can make better decisions and actually act on the data,” Sutarik says.
In addition, fleets can use their real-world experience, combined with the data, to make much more informed decisions with the cumulative data rather than relying on just one source.
“They’re going to be the ones that look at that data and be able to have insights from it,” Sutarik says. “It’s just history. Past behavior is a great indicator of future behavior.
“I remember working with a fleet in a past job that had a whole bunch of fault code alerts going off,” Sutarik recalls. “They didn’t do anything, and after a while, the vehicles failed. The next time it happened, the fleet proactively brought the trucks, and guess what? They were broken. We were able to fix them.
“Real-world experience is going to reinforce what you see. Without the ability to refer to past events in the real world, it’s just data.”
