Wreford’s Transport cuts costs with VeriLocation
Wreford’s Transport cuts costs with VeriLocation
Northampton-based haulage company, Wreford’s Transport wanted to manage its fleet of 60 HGVs more efficiently in the face of rising fuel costs.
Wreford’s Transport purchased the VeriLocation GPS tracking solution, VL-Fleet, and was one of the first companies to trial VL-CANbus, an innovative tool from VeriLocation for monitoring and improving driver behaviour to reduce fuel consumption.
Wreford’s Transport has been delivering a quality haulage service to UK and European businesses for over 100 years. It provides UK and continental vehicles ranging from 3.4cwt to heavy 44 tonne HGVs. It operates international freight forwarding services as well as supplying contract distribution in customers’ own livery. In addition, Wreford’s runs its own LGV training school.
Wreford’s is a family business, run by Managing Director, Mr Mike Wreford and his sons Mark and Andy. Wreford’s Transport is committed to future growth and stability and has been using the VL-Fleet GPS tracking system since June 2006.
Easier fleet management
As Mark Wreford explains: “The VL-Fleet tracking system is really easy to use. We just log on to the website using our secure user name and password to see where the vehicles are, and their speed and direction of travel. This saves us so much time if there is an additional pick-up to be made or we have an enquiry from a customer - it means we don’t have to phone round the drivers to find out where they are. Sometimes the customer will call us to ask is where the driver is and we can confirm that they have just arrived!”
Mark continues: “With a fleet of 60 vehicles, it’s hard to remember where each vehicle has gone and what time it left. With VL-Fleet, we don’t have to rely on our memories as much. Currently, about half the vehicles are fitted with VL-Fleet, and we are working towards equipping the whole fleet.”
Better administration
“Drivers’ expenses can sometimes cause concern, but VL-Fleet is ideal for administering them. For example, we can check the system to see where a driver ends his shift and if any nights out expenses are due we pay them accordingly. We didn’t think that we had a problem with drivers’ expenses before we fitted the system, now we know we haven’t.
“We find that VL-Fleet also protects the drivers if a dispute arises with a customer. We avoid the situation where it’s the driver’s word against the customer – we can easily print out reports and send them to the customer. Then everybody has the facts.
Cost-effective
“We looked at several fleet tracking systems before buying VL-Fleet,” continues Mark. “Financially this was the best one. We pay a one-off fee and it saves us time, reduces our mobile phone bills and helps us to manage our fleet better. VeriLocation have been very helpful and have tailored the system for us to exactly meet our needs.”
Controlling fuel consumption with VL-CANbus
Wreford’s Transport believes that it can make further significant cost savings by using the VL-CANbus driver performance tool from VeriLocation.
Andy Wreford, Fleet Engineer says: “We’re always looking at fuel consumption, we must think about how we could reduce it every day.” Apart from load weight, the biggest factor to affect fuel consumption on a typical HGV is driver behaviour. VL-CANbus gives fleet managers control over driver behaviour by providing information by driver then ranking the key indicators within a company’s fleet.
The main indicators that can be monitored are: mpg by journey by driver, harsh braking or acceleration events, over rev’ing, excess torque and engine idling where it’s greater than a set period. The combination of these factors results in a score or rank for each driver, so good performance can be rewarded to achieve the best results in the short term.
Significant cost reductions
Wreford’s Transport has been trialling the VL-CANbus for several weeks and the results are impressive. Andy Wreford comments: “It’s early days, but I estimate that we could reduce our fuel consumption by 5%.” And with a typical vehicle using £50,000 of fuel per year, a 5% reduction equates to annual savings of £2,500 per vehicle.
“During the trial we discovered that one vehicle was stationery and ticking over for 3½ hours,” continues Andy. “Just the knowledge that driver behaviour and fuel consumption are being monitored will encourage drivers to operate more efficiently.”
He concludes: “Fuel consumption is so time consuming to analyse, if you had to do it on your own I reckon it would take one person full time. With VL-CANbus we can review the figures at the end of each week and use this information in routine driver training to nip bad habits in the bud.”
back to case studies >