Fleet management

Background

• Upon commencement in 2008 it was apparent that much of the fleet MRC had inherited was in poor condition, often unsuitable for intended use and in many cases unregistered.

• Can anyone relate to this?

• In 2010 Council approved a fleet plan based on fit for purpose vehicles and plant, standardised makes and models and a ‘user pays’ system where all Council fleet users would pay a monthly fee.

• A major clearing auction of all obsolete and BER fleet was planned and held in Alice Springs…..no reserve prices and all was sold.

• Funds from the auction were added to our capex budget and we took the plunge investing in Ford Rangers and the first of the standard model JD 315 Backhoe

• In order to keep track of the fleet and to also charge out internally the ‘Fleet module’ in Tech One was commissioned.

• Anyone ever worked with Tech one?

• The Tech one module was configured with all the required info to keep track of the fleet…VIN numbers, etc, etc.

• In order to charge out monthly within Council it was integrated with the T1 finance system.

• It worked…until we needed to reconfigure the mysterious ‘links’ between fleet and finance…our pockets weren't deep enough to afford T1!!!

• At the same time we had to rethink finance rules around charging out ‘internally’. Community Services became our only customer…..

• T1 was still used but was not user friendly and would bottleneck with the one capable user….there's only 7.6 hours in the day!

• Eventually I just couldn’t remember which white 4wd was which…there had to be a better way ….did I mention we also have a team of mobile mechanics?

• After checking out various equally complex

software solutions we trialled ‘Fleetio’…a fairly new web based system from Alabama with only around 72,000 vehicles worldwide currently.

• We ‘went live’ in April 2014…

• Access levels are set so that collaboration is ‘encouraged’ from all fleet users…the key features being tracking odometers and raising issues….over to the web for a demo……………… (I don’t work for Fleetio!)