3g, fleet, networki, 5g, lte

The sun is setting on 3G. Is your fleet prepared?

Major wireless network carriers are in the process of phasing out their 3G networks – commonly referred to as the 3G sunset. This is the period when wireless carriers will shut off their 3G services to make room for upgraded connectivity. When this occurs, all devices that are not 4G (LTE) compatible or higher will no longer receive cellular service, The period when wireless carriers make room for upgraded connectivity by shutting down existing 3G services is most commonly referred to as the “3G sunset”. All devices that are not 4G and LTE compatible (or higher) cease to receive cellular service after the transition is complete. 

 

While the 3G network shutdown is not expected to be completed until the end of 2022, wireless network carriers are already starting to phase out their 3G networks. With 4G and LTE services now on the horizon, the time to plan ahead is now.

 

What does the 3G sunset mean for my existing telematics solutions?

 

The 3G sunset means different things to different fleets; for fleets that haven’t yet upgraded their devices, it could mean loss of connection to vehicle and driving data. To prevent loss of data transferring (and signal), fleets with 3G vehicle tracking devices will need to upgrade to 4G devices. 

 

Conversely, the upgrade to 4G and LTE will provide users with a wider range of capabilities, including enhanced connectivity and speed, faster download speed and wider support for streaming and video interactions. Unfortunately, this means that 3G devices will no longer work or be supported.

 

What can I do to prepare?

 

Fleet managers will want to check all of their installed devices to determine how many still operate on a 3G network. You will definitely want to consider reaching out to your GoFleet Account Manager to determine whether your devices are 3G or 4G, as well as what plans are available to you in order to avoid disruption of service. 

 

Fortunately our team prides itself on expandable, scalable business solutions for fleets of all sizes. Your account manager will be more than happy to work with you to create an installation plan for your new 4G devices to ensure a seamless transition.

 

Fleets can start protecting their technology investment by selecting devices and telematics solutions that are scalable and adaptive. Don’t be caught in the middle of a massive service disruption by assuming the 3G sunset doesn’t apply to your fleet. The move towards 4G — and increasingly 5G — is inevitable. Knowing what lies ahead and adopting flexible technology will help your fleet stay agile.

Utilisation of Your Tech Stack

Maximize Your Existing Tech Stack To Get Ahead In 2021

As businesses round up the year, it’s the perfect time for teams to perform a review of business operations. This allows management to see what processes and projects are working towards their long-term goals and how their finances stack up. When it comes to fleets, the process is no different. However, in addition to reviewing processes and projects, it’s critical for fleets to see how they can utilize their existing tech stack to help them further get ahead.

 

2020 Overview: Adjusting To A New Normal 

2020 was a unique year. For many, it was the first time they truly expected industry uncertainty and long-haul transporters definitely went through a moment of change. As regulations, demand and driver processes were adjusted, with the right driver and utilization of tools, teams were able to power through it. 

For nearly all fleets, 2020 caused operations to change by increasing health and safety protocols, PPE and more. Some fleets also decided to put attention towards their current processes and technologies within their fleet by focusing on using performance or finance boosting tools. Some found this easy to do as they leveraged their existing tech stack. 

As a result, leveraging existing tech stacks is a critical recommendation for all long-haul transporters, to help them get ahead in 2021.

 

Leveraging Telematics And Connected Networks Already In Place 

Nearly all fleets are already digitally connected by some form of a GPS or fleet tracking device to optimize routing, complete routes efficiently and to monitor hours-of-service (HOS) or driving times. 

When looking to maximize existing tech stacks, it’s important for fleets to leverage these already in place networks that connect to already installed hardware. Doing so will immediately increase route completion performance. 

One advantage is to leverage bypass programs that require no hardware as installation is digital. Regardless of where vehicles are, operations can change for the better almost immediately. During a time where social distancing and PPE measures are heightened, this is a major benefit. 

 

Leveraging A Tech Stack With GO9 Devices  

Fleets that are fitted with Geotab GO9 fleet trackers are used for several reasons including GPS tracking, HOS tracking and engine diagnostics. These already in use devices can also leverage the connected network it relies – by installing the unique Drivewyze Weigh Station Bypass Program fleets can truly meet global expansion dreams. 

While Drivewyze did not invent the weigh station bypass program, they did modernize it. By leveraging relationships and connected networks, they were able to implement a program where over 47 states and provinces allowed them to operate by using the safety scores of fleets, as well as other credentials, to allow vehicles to have a green light to pass and not have to pull into weigh stations. 

 

A New Efficiency Tool: Hardware-Free Weigh Station Bypass Programs 

A weigh station bypass program works by using vehicle GPS location data from a GO9 device in correlation to the GPS location of weigh stations, as well as unique weigh in motion scales strategically embedded in highways prior to a station. If a weigh station is participating in the program, the vehicle will have their fleet information and weight calculated from the motion scales automatically and this data will be cross referenced against screening rules to determine whether they are required to pull in. Typical screening rules include: 

  • Fleet safety score
  • Weight of vehicle while approaching station 
  • IFTA payment completion 

Many fleets find that they are authorized to pass stations approximately 98% of the time, immediately resulting in saving resources and time. In fact, most fleets report approvals of preclearance more often than not and notice a near immediate ROI when a truck receives just one or two bypasses a month. For drivers who find they are held up at weigh stations this is a game changer. 

 

Weigh Station Bypass Programs In Real Life 

Over the last year, weigh station bypass programs have thrived as they have been leveraged by fleets to streamline workflows when it comes to driver delivery times. When speaking to Drivewyze’s Weigh Station Bypass Program, they remained agile when encountered with recent pandemic restrictions. 

 

The COVID-19 Shutdown 

During the COVID-19 pandemic many cities and countries shut down for a period of time, resulting in various businesses being closed or services being halted. For long haul trucking, it was felt most as several truck rest stops and weigh stations were closed for a short period of time. As a result, many drivers were unsure of where they could safely stop to rest so resources were overused and HOS records were affected, as they drove around looking for a safe place to stop.

To help long haul fleets, Drivewyze accelerated their development of new features to automatically allow their systems to monitor the location of open rest stops and even provide data on their capacity level.

 

Becoming Part Of A Response Plan 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many offices were instructed to enforce remote working options when possible. For some fleets, as part of their response plan, they took this time to proactively work towards upgrading their fleets by enrolling them into a bypass program. Because the program is completely digital and is free of hardware installation, the implementation of Drivewyze’s program was able to happen instantly. This resulted in improving operational efficiencies and social distancing measures as they did not have to pull off the highway into a weigh station.

After this unexpected year that many fleets have had, it’s hard to tell how 2021 will be. It’s critical for long haul fleets of all sizes to do what they can to elevate their existing tech stack to help them remain successful in the new year.

To learn how weigh station bypass could benefit your fleet, speak with one of our long-haul transportation specialists about receiving a Weigh Station Analytics report to see exactly how much time and money your fleet could save, or inquire about a free trial to experience the service in-cab.

 

Written by: Victoria Gole, Marketing, Branding & Communications Specialist at GoFleet

Contributions by: Doug Johnson, VP of Marketing at Drivewyze

gofleet, customer success, telematics, fleet

GoFleet’s Approach To Customer Success

Over the last 10 years, our three offices in Canada, the United States and the United Arab Emirates have been dedicated to helping hundreds of customers and businesses worldwide to step up their games in the fleet management sector and transform their fleet into a productivity machine. Now it’s time to have you on board with us on this exciting journey and experience the GoFleet difference. 

 

Who Is GoFleet? 

We are in the business of connection and digitalization, offering fleets of any size a tailored solution that helps them grow and succeed, all powered by telematics. At GoFleet, our vision is to bring the most powerful hardware, simple but useful software, and exceptional services together to delight every customer. Collaborating with industry-leading partners and blending in our own unique solutions, advantages and expertise, we believe we can provide you with the right answer for any challenge and pain point you encounter. 

 

What Does GoFleet Do?

GoFleet provides pioneering end-to-end fleet management hardware and software solutions covering every link of fleet operation, from asset tracking, vehicle health monitoring, dispatching, routing to safety management, vehicle maintenance and data storage. Our wide range of products can address customer’s pain points and challenges in every single fleet management aspect, including fuel management, asset tracking, maintenance diagnostics, drivers’ behaviours monitoring and training, routing and dispatching, electronic logging devices and many more. All our products are built and designed upon the foundation of our commitment to improving your fleet management experience in five core objectives: productivity, safety, optimization, compliance and expandability. 

We have previously worked with countless customers from a diverse range of industries to show them how we keep our commitment and transform their workflows from the bottom up. Boston Pizza, one of Canada’s largest and leading casual dining chains, put our telematics tracker into real-world testing and installed it on every delivery vehicle. Since day one, the franchise owner immediately noticed an improvement in delivery efficiency and customer satisfaction across the board. Our tracking solution helps to streamline deliveries and significantly reduce wait times for both delivery drivers and customers. With access to delivery vehicle real-time locations and status, the kitchen chef can now make sure the order is prepared and fresh out of the oven right when the next delivery vehicle is back at the restaurant to pick it up. This ensures that food is not sitting around waiting to be picked up, and customers can receive the freshest and warmest food as fast as possible. 

Our partnership with CR&R Environmental Services further showcases our determination to help businesses in improving fleet safety performance. CR&R Environmental Services is an innovative waste and recycling collection company serving more than 3 million people in numerous countries. Prior to contacting us, CR&R Environmental Services experienced multiple instances where vehicle cameras were not recording or functioning. The camera is an essential piece of equipment used to record video footage of the operations, and an unreliable camera system is simply unacceptable. Loss of footages may put businesses in a disadvantageous position if liability disputes arise when one of the company’s vehicles gets involved in a collision or accident. CR&R Environmental Services reached out to us to see if we can offer an innovative safety solution to replace their current one. Our team worked hard and delivered on promises by leveraging telematics’ power and brought on a highly reliable and capable 360-degree camera system alongside an intuitive software platform. After the implementation, the CR&R Environmental Services noticed an increased level of visibility, reliability and productivity compared to their old system. They feel more confident in their ability to review driving footage in case of an accident and use these videos to train drivers and improve drivers’ skills. 

System integration and optimization are at the core of every product we create. Every piece of equipment, hardware and software we designed works seamlessly together. We deeply understand many customers are frustrated by the incompatibility between different systems and platforms, and it’s our job to bring them all together into one unified fleet management platform that enables you to do everything anywhere. All you have to do is focus on what matters and leave the rest of the hassles to us. 

 

Why Does GoFleet Care?

We take great pride in our products and in building relationships with our customers. We put people, product quality, innovation, environment, the end results, and your feedback at the forefront of everything we do at GoFleet. We deeply care about each of these aspects, and that’s why we adopt cutting-edge technologies to enrich each of them. 

 

People

Everyone’s safety is our top priority. We introduced a range of safety products all aimed at protecting your fleets drivers’ safety. From the driver distraction camera to the collision avoidance system, they are life-saving tools that can make a big difference at the most critical moment. They also give fleet managers and drivers extra peace of mind and an extra layer of protection during everyday operations. 

Our industry-leading customer service team is at your service no matter what problem you encounter in using our products. We provide easy and hassle-free device installation and training guidance so that you can implement our products across the entire fleet in just a matter of time. We offer remote diagnostics support to quickly assess and resolve your issues without the need for you to wait for a technician to come and help. The 24/7 support directly from product manufacturers is included with our ProPlus subscription, and if necessary, we will send in technicians to your sites to help you fix the issues and get your vehicle back on the road as fast as possible. 

 

Quality

We know that you have high expectations for product quality and want a product that works as promised and marketed. That’s why we conduct rigorous testing to ensure each one of the products we ship meets or exceeds our stringent quality standards. Additionally, we know that you want a device that doesn’t compromise and works in any weather conditions and environments. Most of the hardware products we sell are waterproof, shockproof and highly durable, giving you the freedom to use them in any environment. 

 

Innovation

Innovation is in our DNA. We strive to bring you the best and latest technology and incorporate them into our products. We want you to fully experience and utilize our products for a long-lasting period. That’s why we keep adding new features and fix any bugs by frequently pushing new software updates to your device and system. We are committed to bringing in the best available technology such as artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to make your products even smarter throughout time, so when you own our products, you not only gain the right tools to tackle any current challenges but also fully prepare yourselves for the future. 

 

Planet

We care about our environment deeply. The first step we are undertaking is helping businesses and fleets to convert their entire workflow to a paperless model. With all the fleet data stored over the cloud database, we can truly digitalize how information is being used, analyzed and shared within the corporation. We are also incorporating environmental metrics and benchmarks into our vehicle tracking dashboard to allow fleet managers and drivers to access the vehicle emissions and fuel economy information throughout their operation. 

Another initiative that we are taking to safeguard the quality of our living environment is providing the right tool to help businesses’ existing fleet transition into a fully electric vehicle fleet. Working directly with electric vehicle manufacturers, we have developed unique capabilities to access electric vehicles’ data and ensure your electric vehicle has strong data support. We are also working around the clock to expand our support to new models over time. We understand the migration to an electric vehicle fleet is not an easy task; it’s a process, and it takes time. But rest assured, when you are ready to make the move, we have already set the foundation and have the right tools ready for you. 

 

Feedback

The process is important, but for any business, we know that you also value the results. You want to see the improvement in numbers yourself. We have created a comprehensive fleet dashboard showcasing data on fleet performance and efficiency, allowing you to track improvement percentage and return on investment. Based on this data, you could gain a sense of how much improvement our products provide to your fleet operations.   

We are always happy to discuss and hear what you think about our products and services. Our customer support team makes follow-up calls and consultations after your purchase and implementation to ensure the solutions work well for you. And of course, if you encounter any issues with our products, our technical support team is always here to help. 

 

Where Is GoFleet Heading?

We pride ourselves on being an innovation-driven organization, and we will keep innovating to integrate the best and latest technologies to the existing systems and platforms. Utilizing the power of artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data analytics and 5G wireless communication technology, we can truly take the whole fleet management platform to new heights. 

We are also fully prepared for the massive transition from gasoline and diesel fleet models to the electric vehicle fleet model. All of our products have been optimized for either fleet structure, and we are working hard to add support for new electric vehicle models every month. But we want to look even further ahead into the future of commercial fleets. Many of the foundational works have already been undertaken to prepare for the development and transition to autonomous vehicles. We always want to stay ahead of the competition and have the products ready for you, so you can have unlimited choices of how you want to expand your fleet. 

At GoFleet, we keep adapting to constant changes. The pandemic has drastically changed the operational model of many businesses. We are here to make sure our products fit our customers’ changing needs and standards. There is a growing demand for remote fleet management, so we bring the best software to your mobile device, giving you easy access to all the fleet statuses and information on the go. There is a rising trend of high precision and specialized transportation activities, so we offer advanced temperature and humidity monitoring sensors to help your business conquer challenging tasks. As the world is becoming more connected and globalized, we also focus on providing more localized optimization for your fleet. This includes providing convenient software features such as the weigh station bypass service to help your fleet better navigate through your local community. During the current turbulent period, we recognized that we have an even greater responsibility to respond and cope with the unpredicted changes and market trends to create tailored products that meet your businesses’ core needs, but it also gives us valuable opportunities to show you what our products can do for your business.

At GoFleet, our approach of doing everything with passion and professionalism has driven us to success to date, and our commitment to our customers is what motivates us to reach new heights. 

Contact us today to speak with one of our many industry or solutions specialists to assist in nearly anything fleet related!