Plumbing and heating merchant Plumbase is saving money and improving road safety for its company car fleet with the help of driver behaviour technology from Trakm8.
Installed in 220 company cars, the Trakm8 telematics devices are solely used to monitor the safety and efficiency of Plumbase’s drivers, without tracking their locations. The business already uses a full telematics solution on its 200-strong delivery vehicle fleet, including vehicle tracking, driver behaviour and driver identification.
The devices plug straight into the car’s on-board diagnostics port, and monitor higher-risk and fuel-thirsty behaviours such as over-revving and harsh braking, awarding drivers a percentage score for each journey. Each driver can view their own score in the Trakm8 Drive app; while the transport manager can view all scores.
Within three months of operation, the average score across the company rose from a creditable 72% to an impressive 84%. Plumbase has now established a Driver of the Month competition to incentivise employees to continue increasing their scores.
Nigel Grainger, transport manager for Plumbase, said: “An increase of 12 percentage points is really pleasing, as it demonstrates that our company car drivers are fully engaged with this initiative. We are also getting reports of much-improved fuel economy, meaning that we are saving money and reducing emissions from our car fleet as well.”
Plumbase has also been able to negotiate a reduction in its insurance premium for implementing the technology, with driver behaviour analytics having been proven to reduce driver risk.
Grainger finished: “One of the advantages of Trakm8 is that the reports are easy to run, which makes our job easier, too.”
