The Humboldt County, Calif., Office of Education (HCOE) has selected FleetCommander fleet and motor pool software to automate the management of its fleet of vehicles. In addition to student transportation, the department maintains a fleet of 55 vehicles for work-related use by 350 employees, whose responsibilities take them to school sites, students' homes, or other locations throughout the county. The announcement was made today by Agile Access Control Inc., (Agile) creator of FleetCommander.
"The HCOE needed to automate the fleet management processes that have become so cumbersome for them. Manually reserving vehicles, collecting odometer data, keeping track of keys, keeping track of vehicle preventative maintenance, managing their motor pool and assigned vehicles, and maintaining paper log books for special education buses have all become very challenging for the HCOE," says Matthew Wade, Vice President of Sales at Agile. Wade himself has more than 10 years of experience working with fleets within state and city governments as well as within the private sector. He has personally been involved with the deployment of enterprise fleet solutions for more than 50 motor pool operations, and is very familiar with the challenges faced by fleets. According to Wade, the HCOE has tried several different methods for managing their fleet, and now is looking forward to implementing the technological solutions provided by FleetCommander. FleetCommander technologies will automate each of the manual processes, including reservations and motor pool management, maintenance tracking, billing, assigned vehicle management, and key control.
In particular, Wade says the ability to automatically collect odometer and trip data will be a crucial improvement for HCOE fleet operations. "Right now, the fleet staff relies on human input of mileage, which they tell us is often inaccurate. The FleetCommander UDC (utilization and diagnostic chip) is our newest product that will collect that information from within the vehicle and transmit it wirelessly to FleetCommander, eliminating the need for users to input that data themselves," he says. Wade added that the small device (measuring approximately 1" x 1.5" x 2") installs in a matter of seconds on a vehicle's OBD port and operates on a secure network. In addition to odometer data, the UDC automatically collects information such as driver behavior, utilization data, and trip details, and uploads it to FleetCommander. Once collected, FleetCommander can provide reports that can help fleet staff make recommendations to drivers regarding safe driving practices, and understand if they have too few or too many vehicles.
FleetCommander's powerful online vehicle reservation capabilities will help with another challenge the HCOE has faced: last-minute vehicle reservations. "Since our solution is web-based, their users can make reservations conveniently without having to submit paper requisition forms as they have done in the past. That will greatly reduce the burden of last-minute scrambles for vehicles," says Wade. In addition, the HCOE has decided to implement FleetCommander's secure key box technology to enable users to pick up and return keys around the clock, without assistance from fleet staff.
"We are pleased to welcome the Humboldt County Office of Education to our growing family of organizations automating their fleets with FleetCommander technologies. We are confident things are going to get a whole lot easier for them very quickly, and we are proud to have been selected to help them achieve their goals," says Ed Smith, president and founder of Agile, who anticipates Humboldt County to have FleetCommander up and running by March.
