Managing a commercial fleet is among the toughest jobs in America. As a fleet manager, you’re faced with a lot of challenges. To name a few:

  • Constantly changing compliance burdens
  • The driver shortage necessitating hiring drivers with little experience. This, combined with high turnover rates, can make coaching drivers feel like an uphill battle.
  • Ensuring drivers whom you rarely see maintain your company’s safety standards, both in driving behavior and vehicle maintenance. Anything less than excellence can quickly turn into an expensive accident, damaged CSA scores and, most importantly, lost lives.

At Motive, our mission is to make managing a fleet easier.

That’s why we’re introducing new driver management and alerts features that simplify the life of the modern fleet manager.

Automated alerts. Right to your inbox.

Failed inspections, HOS violation tickets, accidents… by the time a fleet manager typically hears about an issue, it’s too late. The damage is already done.

We hope to make that a thing of the past. 

Our new alert tools turn fleet management from a reactive activity into a proactive one. In a few clicks, fleet managers can set up automated email alerts for the events that matter most, including:

  • HOS violations
  • Hard braking events
  • Hard acceleration events
  • Vehicle fault codes
  • DVIR defects

Let’s look at three driver scenarios to explain how alerts are useful to a fleet manager:

Situation #1

Danny is a new driver. Life on the road has been a tough adjustment, particularly the inconsistent sleeping schedule. The sleep deprivation slows his reaction time, which results in more hard braking events as he dozes and loses a safe space cushion.

With Motive alerts, you’ll receive real-time notifications and be aware of the uptick in hard braking. This allows you to intervene before close calls become expensive accidents or someone gets hurt.

Situation #2

Sarah has been driving for 30 years. The ELD mandate is now in effect. She’s out of drive time but is three hours from home. She continues driving the final stretch, as she has been without incident for decades. The DOT stops her, connects to the ELD, and finds she’s intentionally been driving extra hours. You’re now paying a hefty fine, and your CSA score takes a hit.

With Motive alerts, you’ll receive a real-time notification and will be able to see if the vehicle is still in motion. This allows you to contact Sarah immediately and ask her to pull over.

Situation #3

You’ve recently hired ten new drivers to expand your operations into a new market. Some of them are new to trucking. You’ve given them your standard vehicle maintenance training, but have concerns that they won’t be able to properly diagnose the issues an experienced driver would.

Rather than put your CSA score in jeopardy while they learn, you can set up fault-code alerts for the new drivers. Now, when their vehicles show a key fault, say a brake issue, you’ll receive a real-time notification. This enables you to intervene before the issue becomes serious and direct the driver to a maintenance location if required.

Here’s the dashboard where you’ll create and manage your alerts:

Simply click “Add Alert” and select your desired driver performance and alert type.

An alert can be easily applied to any driver, vehicle, or group, giving you complete flexibility to personalize them:

How can you use groups? Here’s an idea to get you started:

Create a group for new drivers called “Onboarding” and assign each new driver to it for three months. Set up an alert for each dangerous event for members of this group. Now you’ll be able to ensure that new drivers maintain your safety standards out on the road, and you can quickly intervene.

Now, simply add the people or email addresses you’d like the alert to be sent to. You can send alerts to yourself, other fleet managers, or even people outside of your organization by using their email addresses.

You’re done. You’ve created a proactive fleet management strategy.

Next steps to a more effective fleet management strategy

Get a detailed step-by-step guide to setting up your first alert in this support article, Create Alerts.

Request a free demo for the Motive ELD solution, and one of our product specialists will get in touch with all the necessary information. If you have any questions, give us a call 844-325-9230 or send us an email at support@gomotive.com.