HVAC companies are quite often the best friends of home and business owners in varying degrees of HVAC emergencies. Whether you’re dealing with routine service calls gearing up for the summer or winter months ahead or you’re dealing with emergencies, these are seven ways your HVAC business could benefit by using GPS fleet tracking.

1. Reduce fueling costs. Wild fluctuations in the costs of fuel have everyone feeling the sting. Businesses, like yours, that are constantly on the road to get the job done, feel it more than most. Every little bit you can save helps and GPS can help you save by notifying you of wasteful practices, planning more fuel efficient routes, and notifying you when drivers deviate from course, adding expenses and improperly using company time.
2. Encourage better driving.  While poor driving habits can waste an incredible amount of fuel, they can also alienate your potential client base. It’s important that your drivers act as representatives for your business whether they are repairing HVAC systems or on the road to the next job.
3. Provide accurate appointment windows. GPS fleet tracking can be used to pinpoint scheduling needs more accurately creating happier customers for your HVAC business.
4. Give instant notification of delays and updates about arrival times. Customers waiting on someone to come in and bring in blessedly cool air in the summer or wonderfully warm air in winter want to know what’s going on. GPS fleet tracking allows you to keep them updated of your progress and if, or when, there are delays so they aren’t left wondering.
5. Access to accurate billing data. No one likes to feel as though they’ve been cheated or improperly billed. GPS location services offers iron clad proof of your time on a particular jobsite for greater billing transparency.
6. Ease dispatch burdens for priority calls and emergencies. Some jobs are more urgent than others. For instance, when emergencies occur on the coldest days of winter, it takes priority over routine maintenance. GPS fleet tracking can help you manage the dispatch of these emergencies, when they arise, in a way that minimizes the impact to jobs scheduled for the day.
7. Motivate technicians to stay on task. One unexpected side effect of GPS fleet tracking is that it encourages your technicians to stay on task, get the job done, and avoid unnecessary delays (or personal errands) between jobs. This means greater efficiency for your HVAC business and less wasted fuel and labor.

As you can see, there are plenty of benefits to consider that make GPS fleet tracking well worth while for your HVAC company. These are only the beginning.

If you own or manage a HVAC company and are looking to increase efficiencies and decrease costs, give us a call here at LiveViewGPS at 1-888-544-0494 to learn more about how a GPS fleet tracking solution can help.

Your CSA (compliance, safety, accountability) score can have a huge impact on your fleet operations and expenses. The better you understand your score, the more quickly you can get your fleet’s CSA score where you want it to be to offer maximum benefit.

What Factors Into Your CSA Score?

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) uses data obtained from roadside inspections and crash reports over the last two years to determine your CSA score. That data is organized into the following categories:

1. Unsafe driving. Does your fleet have a history of unsafe driving violations, like speeding, improper lane changes, or even of drivers failing to wear seatbelts?
2. Compliance with hours of service. How well are you keeping up with HOS regulations?
3. The fitness of drivers. Do your drivers have adequate experience, education, and health to operate your vehicles?
4. Violations involving alcohol or controlled substances. Impaired driving violations are costly for your fleet. Create policies that strictly prohibit impaired driving.
5. Vehicle maintenance. How well do you maintain your vehicles and secure your loads?
6. Crash indicators. What is the history of state-reported crashes with your carrier?
7. Compliance concerning hazardous materials. Do you take your responsibilities when transporting hazardous materials seriously?

These numbers are updated once each month to ensure that you’re always operating with the latest scores and so you know where you stand. You can use GPS fleet tracking to assist you in your efforts to improve your CSA score by

• Automatically scheduling routine maintenance
• Setting up alerts when drivers speed
• Logging driver hours behind the wheel to ensure compliance,
• Notifying you of other driver behavior consistent with impaired, distracted, or sleepy driving to prevent unnecessary accidents and more.

How Does the Score Work?

Some carriers find the CSA scoring system a little complex. All carriers are assigned numbers between 0 and 100. These numbers reflect the percentage of trucking companies who scored higher than your company in a specific group.

What this means is that if your score was 25, only 25 percent of other carriers or companies scored higher than your organization. On the other hand, if your CSA score is 75, that means you have a lot of work to do as 75 percent of your competitors had higher CSA scores in a category than your organization.

Typically scores between 0 and 49 are considered satisfactory scores with scores between 50 and 74 qualifying as conditional scores. Scores between 75 and 100 are unsatisfactory and indicate you have a lot of work to do to improve your situation and your score.

The Takeaway

The great thing about this system is that every month offers opportunities for improvement. Now that you understand your CSA score better, you have an opportunity to affect your score, for the better, in the months to come.

Stay tuned for future articles on Why Good CSA Scores Matter, How and When to Check Your Fleet’s CSA Scores, and Ways to Improve Your CSA Score.

Couple recovers $30,000 wedding ring from landfill

Pretty much everyone has accidentally thrown something important in the trash at some point in their lives. But one couple from San Diego were distraught when they realized they had accidentally thrown away a wedding ring valued at $30,000.

The couple had been doing some spring cleaning when they realized the valuable ring must have fallen into their trash. When they went to check their garbage can, they discovered their trash had already been hauled away and the truck was traveling just down the road. The helpless couple watched the garbage man drive away with the ring in tow.

In response, the couple called the City of San Diego in a panic. The Environmental Services Department assisted the couple in tracking down their garbage bags on the day they believed she lost her ring.

Workers utilized the garbage truck’s GPS tracking device to determine where exactly it was. Unfortunately, employees had to inform the couple that the neighborhood trash had already been dumped at the Miramar Landfill.

The determined couple decided to personally visit the Miramar Landfill site and search for the ring. They thanked the Environmental Service Department for their agency’s implementation of GPS tracking for waste management which helped them promptly track down their garbage.

Within hours, their trash bags would have quickly been lost under piles of other garbage. Thankfully, their bags were perfectly placed on the top of the trash heap, so they were able to find the ring within four minutes of digging.

The couple and employees assisting with the search were all relieved that the ring was able to be recovered promptly. Jose Ysea, a city spokesman, commented on the event explaining that searching for that ring in the landfill was akin to searching for a needle in a haystack.

Employees are usually stuck searching through the muck for hours on end for lost goods, but thanks to the GPS tracking for garbage trucks, everyone was able to descend on the landfill immediately after the couple’s trash was dropped off.