Foris Solutions Boosts Driver Safety, Decreases Fuel Costs with GPS Insight

How can a leading garage door repair and replace service with franchise locations across North America increase its drive safety and reduce fuel costs at the same time?

For fleet managers, the story is compelling. Meet Foris Solutions, which has a culture centered around safety and which focuses on the individual employee. They want to make sure that their people are always in a safe environment while on the job and if they’re not, then help them understand how they can be.

Before using GPS Insight, Foris Solutions would experience safety concerns in the form of frequent speeding tickets, as well as calls from citizens saying that their drivers were speeding out of control or screeching away from a stop. Foris Solutions realized that they needed to focus their culture of safety on driver behavior, rather than just job site safety. They needed a solution quickly to help keep their drivers and the pedestrians in their areas safe.

Excessive Fuel Use

Foris Solutions knew the vehicles were being abused due to more wear and tear on the vehicles than normal. Management noticed by way of higher maintenance and fuel costs. They did not know why these costs were on the rise and needed insight into what was causing this and a plan on how to stop it.

What GPS Insight Did

In their search for a telematics provider, Foris Solutions searched for a company that would provide the best overall customer service, which is why they chose to go with GPS Insight.

Decreased “Safety Events”

GPS Insight defined four key metrics for Foris Solutions to evaluate as “safety events” to curb bad driver behavior. The areas they looked at were harsh acceleration and deceleration, speeding events over 80 mph, and posted speeding events where the vehicles traveled 10 mph or more above the posted speed limit of the road. These safety events were judged per 100 miles per vehicle to make it equal across the board. Using the tools put in place by GPS Insight, Foris Solutions decreased “safety events” by as much as 89%. These tools ensured drivers were not only being safe on the job but on the road as well.

Decreased Idle Time

What Foris Solutions found in benchmarking the data was that some of the vehicles were turned on all day, every day without ever being shut off. Idle time across the fleet in one month alone added up to 22,660 minutes, which translates to almost 400 hours, and approximately 200 gallons of fuel. This was their answer as to what was causing more wear and tear and higher fuel costs. GPS Insight notifies the driver in real-time to shut off the vehicle, as well as management of these idle events. Within 3 months, idle time decreased by 30%

Unexpected Benefit

Something that Foris Solutions was not expecting to happen with the implementation of telematics was the gamification that followed with the drivers. As Joe L., COO of Foris Solutions puts it, “At first, our technicians didn’t like the telematics; it was perceived as a ‘Big Brother’ thing watching over them too closely. Now when we post the list of [safety] incidents, it’s a badge of honor to not have your name on the list. The technicians have made it into a competition to see who can get the least amount of incidents.”

Created Driver Policy

GPS Insight has provided a system of accountability for their drivers. Foris Solutions created a driver policy that includes metrics tracked through GPS Insight that every driver has to sign and acknowledge as part of their employment.

One driver was let go after GPS Insight and the driver policy was put into place because of his continuous speeding habit (continued receiving speeding tickets). In the state of Michigan where unemployment cases almost always favor the individual over the company, Foris Solutions won the case based on the data from GPS Insight and saved around $10,000.

When asked why Joe thinks other businesses should use GPS Insight, he responded:

“It’s so easy to work with your team. Everyone has gone above and beyond expectations throughout the entire process. Questions are answered before I even have the chance to ask them.

Being alerted in real-time by email and having an automated alert sent to the driver has dramatically decreased the light duty safety events.”

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