June/July 2007

Once a tracking system is installed in a vehicle fleet, it can play an increasingly important role in the efficiency of the operation. That's the experience of Proplant, a leading plant and survey equipment hire company in the South West, with bases at Cardiff, Swansea, Milford Haven and Bristol. Initially it wanted to monitor the movement of its plant service and delivery vehicles more accurately. In the event, the system it chose (SupaTrak from CMS) does much more.

General Manager Paul Charles says the primary purpose was to be able to see where the service and plant delivery vehicle fleet were at any given time, and also where they had been - particularly useful in answering customer enquiries about progress of deliveries.

But that was just the start. Now, he says, the company is working with CMS to refine it to add and retain customer site information, 'which is particularly useful as many of the sites we deliver plant to are new and do not appear on any map.'

A further project is to put each delivery site's exact location on the SupaTrak mapping system 'so we can easily search for it again.' Charles says that if a full database of these sites can be created, 'it will save time and aid future transport planning.'

The company is also using SupaTrak's daily reports function to assemble driver time sheets, cutting down on administration time. Finally, the system is providing extra security. It updates a vehicle's position every 60 seconds, and centrally-hosted browser-based mapping ensures all vehicles are visible at all times.