How New Jersey American Water Uses Fleet Management To Lower Fuel Costs, Optimize Scheduling

By Trimble Geospatial

New Jersey American Water is a subsidiary of American Water Works & Guarantee Company. It was founded in 1886 and has been servicing customers and communities for more than 125 years. New Jersey American Water provides high-quality water and wastewater service to 600,000 customers in six counties using a fleet of 600 vehicles.

“Our drivers read meters, change meters, and fix main breaks,” says Jeff Bowlby, operations supervisor for New Jersey American Water. To better serve this many customers and still maintain a high level of service, New Jersey American Water needed a fleet management solution to improve scheduling and raise worker productivity.

They chose Trimble GeoManager Fleet Management, a GPS cloud-computing platform that allows companies to increase productivity and profits by tracking, managing, and optimizing vehicles and employees’ work. The Fleet Management solution enables companies to track their vehicles in real time, confirm a vehicle is at its scheduled location on time, and view and print detailed reports about daily activities.

“We need to know the location of the vehicles at all times to improve productivity,” Bowlby says. With Fleet Management, it’s easy for dispatchers to find the closest vehicle to a job site and make assignments based on real-time schedule status. “GeoManager has definitely been a helpful tool,” Bowlby adds. “We can give customers a window and the driver will call half an hour before getting there so the customer is always updated on their service status.”

Fleet Management offers visibility into day-to-day operations to identify, manage, and improve key areas of the business so New Jersey American Water has better control of driver safety, customer service, back office administration, fuel consumption, and field service vehicle efficiency.

Bowlby says New Jersey American Water needed the capability to confirm that drivers arrive at their assigned location on schedule. “Employees are allowed to take company vehicles home at night but need to report to their work site by 8 a.m. the next day,” he says. "It’s been an excellent investment. Customers are our first priority, and GeoManager helps us meet our goals of quick response, knowledgeable staff, and environmental responsibility."

With Fleet Management, dispatchers and managers know when vehicles arrive on site, duration there, and vehicle location throughout the day. Knowing drivers’ schedules makes it possible to more accurately monitor driver and field technician time, which helps reduce payroll and overtime costs.

Another issue was excessive idling. “We were spending $2.6 million on fuel each year,” Bowlby says. “Now GeoManager sends an alert if a vehicle exceeds 15 minutes of idling. We’ve cut our fuel expenses almost in half.”

Speeding also was a challenge. Besides the added wear and tear on vehicles, speeding provided a huge driver safety risk. The National Safety Council reports that one workplace motor vehicle crash can cost a business upwards of $25,000, and if there are injuries the cost jumps to more than $125,000.

“We originally set our alerts at 65 mph, which is the maximum speed limit (in New Jersey) but realized there were too many roads with 25 mph zones where the drivers were going 40 mph so we needed to adjust our parameters,” Bowlby says. “Using GeoManager we set alerts for green, yellow, and red. If a driver has too many reds, we alert the supervisor.”

Fleet Management also has helped cleared drivers of speeding complaints. “We got a call that one of our trucks was going too fast,” Bowlby says. “The truck was actually going under the speed limit and we were able to document it using GPS.” In another incident, Bowlby says they were able to show that the truck was nowhere in the vicinity.

An added benefit of GeoManager is its Vehicle Diagnostics solution, which schedules vehicle maintenance and reduces the chance of mechanical failure. “Our drivers are very busy servicing customers and they don’t have time to track maintenance issues,” Bowlby says. “Sometimes they don’t even notice that the check engine light is on. Now we get a code when the light is on and we know right away whether it’s just vapor from a loose gas cap or if the truck needs servicing.”

New Jersey American Water first installed GeoManager in 2009 in customer vans. Now it’s deployed in all their vehicles. "It’s been an excellent investment," Bowlby says. "Customers are our first priority, and GeoManager helps us meet our goals of quick response, knowledgeable staff and environmental responsibility."