Begun by Mark Griffith in 1999, Abundant Home Care, Poway, Calif., which serves San Diego and Riverside counties, was looking for a more effective way of tracking vehicle performance for its fleet of 10 vans.
"The system we first installed wasn't working well for us," says Abundant Home Care Manager Mike Coe. "The old system was cell phone-based, and when our delivery technicians turned off their phones, the system didn't work. We just were not getting an accurate feedback. With constantly rising fuel costs, we needed to be able to keep track of each van's mileage on a consistent basis."
Using a new system from Escondido, Calif.-based A&D Technology, Coe was able to keep track of each van's daily mileage and location. Driver personal van use dropped to zero, while drivers' stricter attention to speed limit parameters boosted average vehicle gas mileage from 13 to 16 mpg, no small feat for fully loaded Chevy vans involved in heavy highway traffic.
In one instance, the tracking system saved the provider from possible litigation. As Coe describes it, "We had a call from a local Alzheimer's care facility … They were very upset that we had picked up about $8,000 worth of medical equipment for one of the facility's patients. From our A&D tracking system, we were able to prove to them that our driver was nowhere in that area, except to pass within miles of it on the highway. Turns out that another company had come in and picked up the equipment — no paperwork and no questions asked. Our GPS system saved us a mess of trouble and even got us an apology."
Coe also receives text messages via the system when vehicle maintenance is due. "The system also has a self-smogging device that eliminates the need to take each vehicle in to be smogged, and saves DMV trips as well," he says.
Abundant Home Care recently took over Escondido-based Accucare Medical Equipment. In addition to adding one more new vehicle to its Poway fleet, the company plans to replace Accucare's aging delivery vans — all equipped with the new GPS feature.
Read the main story, "Putting GPS to Work," for information on what gps technology can do for you.
