Your construction fleet is your livelihood. Without it, there would be no work, and no revenue. When you find ways to extract more value from it, the results drop to the bottom line. Yet a surprising number of contractors are failing to take advantage of one of the simplest and most powerful ways to increase equipment performance -- telematics.

Most original equipment manufacturers today include telematics hardware in their heavy equipment. But if your equipment is older, or if you haven’t activated the devices, you’re missing out.

Some of today’s telematics devices can do far more than track the location of equipment. Used in conjunction with a cloud-based fleet management system, they can help you better understand how your equipment is being used. And they can help to improve operational efficiency, safety and sustainability. Even if your fleet is small enough that you can locate every piece without the help of GPS, other data provided by telematics makes it worth the modest investment.

Using the same fleet management platform to track both owned and rented equipment allows you to see across your entire fleet and manage both fleets at the same time.

Benefits of telematics

Below are some of the benefits of installing or activating advanced telematics devices on your owned equipment.

Find your equipment

Seeing the location of all your equipment, owned and rented, on a map helps ensure that no machine goes to waste. Location tracking uncovers “misplaced” equipment and discourages hoarding.

Some fleet management platforms show you not only where your equipment is in real time but also how it got there, courtesy of breadcrumb mapping.

Right-size your fleet

Telematics data reveals exactly how heavily you’re using each piece of equipment. If a certain machine is underutilized, it might be time to sell it and rent a similar machine when you need one. If some are over-utilized, you might consider purchasing another machine, or renting to fill the gap on large projects.

Monitoring utilization across both owned and rented equipment can help you right-size your overall fleet and make smart buy vs. rent decisions that save you money.

Utilization data also enables more accurate budgeting on future projects, and it helps you more precisely estimate the time it will take to complete similar projects.

Improve your fleet maintenance

Creating and following a preventive maintenance program is not easy. Telematics can help by providing odometer and engine-hour readings. Maintaining equipment based on these metrics instead of following a calendar-based schedule helps curb under-maintenance, which can lead to unexpected downtime and expensive repairs. It also protects against over-maintenance, which can eat into profits and waste natural resources such as engine oil.

In a fleet management platform such as United Rentals’ Total Control^®, you can create your own service alerts, including pending-due and past-due maintenance alerts.

Proper maintenance of owned equipment can help you avoid costly downtime, extend the equipment’s lifecycle, and preserve its resale value.

Reduce your fuel spend

Is engine idling blowing up your fuel budget? Telematics enables you to run time-stamped idling reports in a platform such as Total Control. You can see how long each machine idles, even pinpointing discretionary idling. If you’re taking advantage of equipment access management, you can easily identify which operators idle machines the most. Reducing idling lowers your fuel spend and decreases your carbon emissions.

In addition to incidents of long idling, telematics data reveals which operators drive aggressively. Abrupt braking, fast acceleration, and unnecessary stopping and starting decrease fuel efficiency. Aggressive driving also poses safety risks. Telematics can help you see which operators may benefit from additional coaching.

Track your tools

One advantage of equipment telematics may come as a surprise: Telematics devices on jobsite equipment can help you track your tools. When you add Bluetooth tags to tools and other assets, the telematics devices read the tag as an asset moves across the jobsite, reporting its location. Tool tracking can dramatically shrink tool loss and reduce unnecessary overspending on replacement tools.

If you have active telematics devices on your equipment, you can track your tools using a new, automated tool tracking solution from United Rentals called ProBox OnDemand™.

Set up alerts

Once you’ve begun using telematics, you can set up a host of helpful alerts in your fleet management platform. In Total Control, alert options include:

1. Low-fuel, low-battery and low-DEF alerts, which help you avoid unexpected downtime;
2. Low-utilization alerts, which tip you off when a piece of equipment sits idle for an extended period;
3. Service alerts, complete with engine fault codes when there’s a maintenance issue to address;
4. Long-idling alerts; and
5. Geofencing alerts, which notify you when equipment moves outside of the yard or off the jobsite, helping to reduce theft and equipment misplacement.

Installing or activating telematics devices

After-market telematics devices are relatively easy for experienced professionals to install. United Rentals can hardwire them into equipment that’s powered by engines or batteries, or bracket-mount them on other equipment. United Rentals can also provide a subscription service plan for new or existing devices.

Telematics customers receive access to Total Control at no extra charge. Total Control offers intuitive dashboards, an extensive menu of customizable alerts, easy-to-generate reports and a variety of unique features, including estimated emissions tracking.

Customers who manage their owned fleet through Total Control can manage their rental fleet on the same platform when they rent equipment from United Rentals.

Technology is helping construction become a safer, more productive, more sustainable industry. Using telematics to remotely track and monitor mobile equipment is one of the easiest-to-adopt and most affordable ways to get more from your fleet, avoid unplanned downtime, reduce fleet costs and, with a little luck, turn a bigger profit.

Contact the Customer Equipment Solutions group to inquire about adding telematics devices to your owned equipment.