Cordy Environmental used Motive to exonerate drivers. Three times.

Finding the right tech

Cordy takes safety very seriously. Allen Chatten is the company’s Health, Safety, and Environmental Advisor (HSE) overseeing safety and transportation compliance.

As a seasoned HSE advisor, Chatten understands the important role technology plays in managing a business. Chatten thoroughly researched at least 15 fleet management solutions before choosing Motive, formerly KeepTruckin.

Chatten first learned about Motive through a colleague and started with Motive’s free app. After discovering how easy it was to use, he then installed a Vehicle Gateway in one of his trucks. Two weeks later, a driver told Chatten if he ever wanted to remove the device Chatten’d “have to fire him first!”

Chatten knew then that he would install Motive in all of Cordy’s vehicles. Chatten would later discover that Motive’s GPS and geofence tracking would play a crucial role in exonerating his drivers while strengthening the company’s reputation with customers.

Exonerating drivers with GPS and geofencing

It’s typical for Cordy Environmental Inc. to work on site with other trucks from different companies.

Because there are so many vehicles in one location, it’s hard to keep track of whose truck did what. Chatten recalled one incident in which the customer believed Cordy was responsible for dumping drill mud in an area where it wasn’t supposed to be.

“It was mud from a drilling well, so that narrowed it down to our vacuum truck,” recalls Chatten.

This issue was easily resolved after Chatten opened the GPS location history. He pulled the report of where his trucks were over the last few weeks. He then sent the customer a screengrab and explained, “We were able to exonerate ourselves because we proved that we had never even been there in the last two weeks. That was a big help for us because we kept our good standing with our customers.”

He also used Motive’s geofence feature, which allowed him to see when the truck entered and exited the worksite. Geofence is heavily used in Cordy’s business because it allows Chatten to designate a virtual fence and alerts him each time a truck passes through.

“The geofence capabilities showed us that our truck was in and out in four minutes,” says Chattne. “There’s no way a truck can spray mud like that in four minutes.” He sent the client the screengrab of the truck’s location and how long the vehicle was on site.

Another benefit that resulted from this exoneration was that Cordy was able to retain their high-performing employee. Cordy’s business development manager, Steven Whitehead, recalls that the client wanted the employee who was behind the wheel to be removed from the site. “Unfortunately, [our employee] was caught in the crossfire but we saved his job,” says Whitehead. “He was a trusted, high-performing employee, but we had to prove it. If it wasn’t for Motive’s system, we wouldn’t have been able to.”

Resolving billing conflicts

GPS location history eliminates the he-said-she-said billing disputes that may sometimes arise when Cordy sends its vehicles to strip sites. A strip site removes oil and other materials from mud so it can be reused. Cordy regularly goes to these sites, which charge by the hour.

Chatten explains, “[The driver] will say it took two hours to dispose of materials because we were [waiting] in line, but the customer [who is paying for the expense] says, ‘No, it didn’t take that long.’ So we pull up the GPS location history and show the customer where our trucks were. You can see that obviously, our driver was still in the line.”

Whitehead adds, “If we’re late because our driver got caught behind a train, we can show that as well. Motive gives us the opportunity to explain how the scope [of the timeline] changed, without it being anyone’s fault.”

Empowering customers with better visibility

In order to improve efficiency and minimize the guesswork, Chatten said he gave his customer a Motive login to see the location of Cordy’s trucks whenever they had any concerns. Chatten already knew how user-friendly Motive’s dashboard was, so he felt confident in showing his customers what to do.

“I added [the customer] as a fleet manager and told them they can check to see where our trucks are,” begins Chatten. “I showed the customer how to use geofence and breadcrumbs on all of our trucks, so she could do a query on her own. The fact that we were able to teach our customer how to do this, well, that just raised our accountability.”

Whitehead believes these exonerations help improve Cordy’s transparency and trust with their customers. Whitehead likes the fact that “Motive gives Cordy an unbiased version of events.”

Pro tip: Just like Chatten did, you can grant your customers limited access to view the current location of vehicles, see location history, receive alerts, and view reports. You can also customize features that matter most to you and your customers.

Improving safety with dash cams

Whitehead says he understands the need for dash cams and points out, “We’re not closing that door. As accountability and electronic tracking increases, it would be something that we revisit for sure.”

Chatten wants to stay competitive by being safer and believes dash cams can provide that. “Especially with us being in the spill cleanup business, there are so many things that can go wrong,” notes Chatten. “If we can be better than our competition, that’s a huge selling feature.”

For the employee who was proven innocent of spraying mud on the site, Chatten recognizes that if they had a dash cam in the truck, “it would’ve exonerated us that much sooner.”