April/May 2008

Having started fitting Trafficmaster's Smartnav navigation as standard last year on Berlingo, Despatch and Relay panel vans, Citroën has now taken the concept a stage further by giving users access to Trafficmaster's new Fleet Director fleet management tool. It claims this is a world first for a van manufacturer.

The Smartnav service, which downloads route instructions wirelessly from Trafficmaster's control centre, is offered free for three years, but the new management system is a subscription-based service. However, Citroën says the pricing of around £25 (varying according to features selected) is competitive, since the basic tracking hardware is already included on vehicles.

Among options in the service are use of a 'map control centre' with live vehicle reporting and vehicle and driver management reports; exception reports and alerts, including warnings of unscheduled halts or deviations from normal routes; and geo-fence entry/exit alerts.

According to Pat Gallagher, Trafficmaster's director of in-vehicle products, US experience of 4,500 fleet users of Teletrac (the US name for Fleet Director), has shown that users can expect to benefit from productivity gains of 12 per cent, reductions in fuel bills of 13 per cent, 15 per cent less overtime and a 12 per cent cut in unauthorised use of vehicles. Carbon dioxide emissions could be cut by 4.3 tonnes per vehicle per year.