Gila County targets vehicle utilization & efficiency, implements FMIS

County projects ROI in less than one year by reduced vehicle count, added efficiencies

CHANTILLY, VA, August 24, 2017 -- The Gila County, AZ fleet has shed the inefficient use of hand-written logs and spreadsheets to manage their fleet and motor pool in favor of using Agile Fleet’s FleetCommander fleet management information system. The announcement was made today by FleetCommander creator, Agile Fleet.

“We will be able to bring in the data we need to understand the true utilization of our fleet and cut costs by getting rid of unneeded vehicles,” says Shannon Coons, fiscal services manager for the Gila County Public Works Division. “The return on investment will show itself in less than one year.” 

“We sometimes touch the same record four or five times for maintenance and billing. So many duplications of the same records is highly inefficient. This is cumbersome and can lead to many errors and extra work for corrections,” says Coons, of the county’s finance department. County staff has been searching since 2013 for the right solution to handle all the information on maintenance and mileage of the 640 pieces of equipment the county owns, including 368 vehicles.

“Our goal is to change these methods and combine our efforts with technology that can integrate with our current fuel program, and push the billing information into our finance program,” Coons says, allowing the county to drop two software tracking programs. She said the FleetCommander software will reduce duplication and increase accuracy. The GPS tracking component of the solution will automatically collect odometer and driver behavior data for reporting and analysis.

FleetCommander will also enable Gila County to:

• Offer drivers online vehicle scheduling capability around the clock
• Offer drivers access to vehicles and keys via a secure, self-service kiosk and key box
• Automatically collect usage data so that vehicles can be rotated, properly utilized, and identify and eliminate unneeded vehicles
• Receive instant notification of late-returning vehicles
• Communicate and enforce fleet policies automatically
• Eliminate paper processes and save staff time by keeping track of who made, approved, changed, or deleted vehicle requests online
• Collect metrics from all phases of vehicle use
• Use vehicle utilization reports to right-size their fleet size and composition
• Save money by eliminating vehicles that FleetCommander utilization data shows are not needed
• Keep track of driver profiles online
• Run reports and do billing automatically