How Does Unauthorized Vehicle Use Impact Your Business?

Did you know that unauthorized use of company vehicles costs you thousands of dollars each year? And that it may be putting your company at serious risk?

Whether employees are using company vehicles to moonlight as Uber or Lyft drivers, or they’re simply using them in ways you haven’t authorized, vehicle misuse is a serious issue.

In fact, vehicle misuse increases:

• your liability
• your fuel costs, and
• wear and tear on your company’s vehicles.

In this blog, we’ll share how fleet telematics can decrease misuse of company vehicles, and save you thousands in the process.

What Is Telematics?

Telematics technology uses a combination of telecommunications and informatics.

Using GPS and onboard diagnostics, it gathers data on driver behaviour, vehicle location, and vehicle maintenance requirements. This is data you can use to better optimize your fleet, and reduce wasted spend.

3 Benefits of Implementing Telematics to Reduce Vehicle Misuse

1. Prevent potential liability

If a driver gets into an accident while driving a company vehicle off-shift, your company could be left with a big part of the bill.

In fact, you could be liable for:

• damages to other vehicles or property, and
• lawsuits stemming from injuries or fatalities

You'll also face increased insurance costs, plus the intangible cost of loss of company reputation.

That’s a lot of damage — but telematics can help prevent it.

How?

Telematics tracks a vehicle’s location at all times. The data it collects is processed, and then sent to you almost immediately. So, if drivers are using their vehicles after-hours in an unauthorized manner, you’ll know about it right away.

Ultimately, telematics gives you an accurate picture of what’s happening with your vehicles 24/7. It can help you address issues before they escalate into full-blown catastrophes.

2. Save money on fuel

If drivers are using vehicles off-shift, or if they travel unnecessarily far for lunch or coffee while on shift, your gas bill will soar.

Again, this is where telematics’ vehicle tracking feature is invaluable. Not only can it help you curb off-shift trips, it can tell you where drivers are at all times during their shift.

Telematics route optimization capabilities can identify the closest locations for food and gas, making on-shift trips more efficient.

And did you know that using telematics together with fuel cards can help you prevent fuel fraud?

Here’s how it works:

A fuel card will tell you how much fuel drivers have purchased. Telematics will tell you how many kilometers a driver has driven while on shift.

If there’s a discrepancy between the two, you’ll have cause to investigate for potential fuel fraud.

Learn more about fuel fraud in our blog: How Fleet Fuel Tracking Reduces Fuel Fraud.

3. Prevent unnecessary wear and tear

Misuse of company vehicles will depreciate them faster. If you reduce kilometers driven by preventing off-shift use, you can increase the life, and resale value of your vehicles. This will lead to significant total cost of ownership savings, especially if you have a larger fleet.

(For more on how telematics can help you save, check out: 5 Benefits of Using Telematics Software for Fleet Management.)

Besides helping you identify drivers who are using vehicles off-shift, telematics will alert you to any damaging driving behaviours such as:

• speeding
• hard braking
• harsh accelerating and cornering

With telematics, you’ll prevent unnecessary maintenance, and get more money for your vehicles when it’s time to sell them.

Conclusion

Telematics is an essential tool for better fleet management. With telematics, you can:

• track a vehicle’s location
• monitor vehicle use-time on-shift and after hours
• evaluate fuel consumption
• optimize driver routes, and
• be informed of unsafe driving behaviours

These are key in identifying and reducing company vehicle misuse. Ultimately, implementing fleet telematics software will result in less wasted money and a stronger bottom line.

This blog was originally published on March 27, 2019