Steel View gets more time, fewer headaches with Motive.

Challenge

Trucks at Steel View perform a variety of services, from potable water hauling to complete plant turnarounds and shutdowns. When the company’s vehicles are out in the field, it’s important for management to be able to track locations. Steel View wanted to improve compliance, track vehicles, and work with technology that was easy for drivers to use.

Previously, Steel View used another solution when it made the switch from paper to e-logs. When the company wanted GPS and IFTA tracking, its former provider had to integrate with another one to get a complete solution, which the Steel View team found to be cumbersome.

“When I was pulling reports up, [they] were very archaic. The software was very slow,” says Steel View President Rod Stang. “It just seemed like it was built in 1980 and it hadn’t been updated. It was a pain.”

Solution

With the previous solution no longer fitting its needs, Steel View turned to Motive. Starting with a rollout of Motive’s gateway technology in a small portion of its fleet, Steel View decided to make the switch not just for the vehicles that previously had ELD technology but to expand to owner/operators, who make up about half the total fleet, as well.

As for the implementation process, Stang says, “I had our senior supervisors use the app themselves for a couple of weeks, then we individually rolled it out to each driver. It was easy to get them converted to Motive. As time went on, they continued to learn from each other.”

Stang continues, “The Motive solution is very user-friendly. I haven’t had negative feedback from any of the drivers in regard to Motive.”

Results

It’s not just Steel View’s drivers that find Motive easy to use. Back-office staff finds log management to be much easier now.

In the past, Steel View managers spent significant time tracking, collecting, finding, auditing, and correcting logs.

“Paper logs used to be a real problem, auditing them and then storing them somewhere else. After using Motive it’s totally integrated so that you don’t have to bring a guy out and train him to view logs,” says Stang. “That process is streamlined. It’s great.”

Steel View is now better prepared for the Canadian ELD Mandate, which was recently finalized. With the technology in place and drivers comfortable with it, Stang and the team feel ahead of the curve, as Canadian fleets must comply by 2021.

Automated IFTA reporting saves lots of time

Steel View also uses Motive for automated IFTA fuel tax reporting to drastically save time on administrative tasks and accurately calculate reports.

“It’s actually doing a lot of the legwork for us, and that’s definitely the most key item right now,” says Stang.

Stang himself used to enter fuel and track IFTA offline. Stang estimates the work to enter would take two full days a quarter before. Now it takes “a couple of hours to do it and compile it.”

GPS tracking improves customer service and auditing

Steel View values customer service, striving to bring a “personal touch” back to its service area. With GPS tracking provided by Motive, Steel View can easily respond to customer calls asking for status updates.

“It’s nice to see where the trucks are visually,” says Stang. “If I pull up [a driver], I can see where he is. Before, we were not on GPS, so we didn’t have the ability.”

In some cases, customers call to question charges based on how many hours they estimate a job should take. Motive’s GPS has been a valuable auditing tool for Steel View, allowing employees to prove the duration of a job while maintaining transparent customer service.

“You can follow the trip reports, and you can see exactly where [drivers are] at what time,” says Stang. “We’re able to audit where and what time to know what they were doing, [including] when they went up to the shop, when they came back, and how long they were on location. We’re a better business because of Motive.”

Fleetio integration equals happier mechanics

To improve maintenance workflows, Steel View also took advantage of an integration between Motive and Fleetio. With it, the company can transfer GPS data and get the hours of the unit to track. This is useful to Steel View as it runs its own maintenance program based on hours. Stang says, “the mechanics are loving it.”

“We’re a better business because of it,” says Stang. “We’ve been able to integrate a lot of our safety forms onto Fleetio.” This helps Steel View staff have the forms on them at all times as well as print forms out so they can scan and track them.

“There’s no manual movement of it by people. So, once we do the form, it’s all tracked, and it’s all in there, and it gives you a nice display. It’s been a really nice program.”