Fresh Direct has signed a five-year contract with vehicle tracking and telematics company Isotrak. Fresh Direct will make extensive use of Isotrak satellite tracking and live vehicle diagnostics to drive fuel savings through monitoring mpg and improving driving styles across the company’s mixed fleet.
Fresh Direct, a leading national food supplier to the UK foodservice industry, already has Isotrak installed in vehicles ranging from articulated and rigid bodied HGVs to large vans. With Fresh Direct’s business expansion the fleet will increase to more than 250 vehicles by the end of 2014 and all will be equipped with Isotrak. The vehicle tracking system combined with Isotrak’s unique CANBus module enables real-time monitoring and capture of key performance indicators (KPI) to help focus on events such as harsh braking, rapid acceleration and engine idling.
Isotrak’s CANBus module is a contactless device that retrieves accurate engine management and driving style data from vehicles. It is a non-intrusive device that overcomes the need to connect directly to the Engine Management System (EMS). It enables Fresh Direct to dynamically manage drivers and generate management reports that help with developing tailored driving styles to suit the various delivery scenarios encountered in towns, cities, longer journeys between drops where cruise control may be used, and rural locations.
“The Isotrak system gives us a real advantage in helping with improving fuel usage. It provides accurate data that we can use to manage driving styles across the fleet. We can capture and monitor various events such as harsh braking, which helps us to drive best practice that suits each of our depots and the types of deliveries they make. This is a major advance than just focusing simply on mpg through issuing an inflexible driving style policy that doesn’t account for the differences in routes and delivery scenarios,” says Nick Allen, Head of Business Improvement, Fresh Direct.
Isotrak has been a long term partner supplying Fresh Direct with vehicle tracking and this new contract builds on that long-term relationship. Isotrak says this sets a firm foundation for further extension of the telematics system for Fresh Direct. For example, Isotrak hopes to integrate its system with Fresh Direct’s bespoke route planning tool to enable comparison of planned versus actual delivery performance. The flexibility of the Isotrak system opens up future opportunities for Fresh Direct to extend its functionality to include other features such as trailer temperature tracking for refrigerated equipment and more detailed driver metrics.
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