If you are Canadian and happen to have a problem with your garage door – or need a new one – then who are you going to call? There is an increasing chance that you will be contacting The Garage Door Depot, a franchise that is rapidly spreading across the country and had established almost 30 outlets at the time of writing.

Set up by Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, based Canadian Access and Door Systems, The Garage Door Depot boasts franchisees in Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, the Yukon and Nova Scotia as well as in its native province.

Firm foundations are required to make a success of such a venture however, something president and chief executive officer, Dean Carman, realised sometime ago. That involves keeping tight control of overheads, a policy that can also have a positive impact on the environment.

With 3,800 customers on its books, the Port Coquitlam business initially ran a fleet of 14 light commercial vehicles. Carman realised at an early stage that it made sense to have a tracking system fitted to monitor their whereabouts as they criss-crossed the Greater Vancouver area.

The aim was not solely to provide a better service to clients. It was also to cut fuel usage and thus minimise CO2 emissions.

Carman recalls that prior to having a Fleet Complete tracking package installed by Complete Innovations, technicians were being despatched to clients and driving some distance to get there when as it turned out one of their colleagues was almost literally just around the corner. Fuel was being wasted as a consequence.

‘It was simply because people didn’t know where everybody was,’ he says.

Employees were allowed to take their vehicles home at night and Carman wanted to be sure that they were not being surreptitiously used for private purposes, burning the firm’s fuel in the process. ‘We trust our staff, but we nonetheless felt it made sense to introduce a formal process to track vehicle location, fuel usage and mileage,’ he comments.

Net result? Fleet Complete’s introduction has cut fuel usage by 21%, in part because the company has been able to employ it as a route planning aid, helping it to work out which are the most direct routes between one location and another.

One thing it has allowed Carman and his colleagues to do is keep a close eye on idling time.

Allowing a vehicle’s engine to tick over unnecessarily wastes fuel and pumps CO2 and harmful emissions into the atmosphere. That is a fact not lost on Today Delivery, an offshoot of USA-based logistics group SEKO.

Opting for a NexTraq Fleet Tracking telematics platform has allowed it to cut engine idling by a hefty 85%, reports general manager Danny Cohagen. Using the package’s Fleet Dispatch application plus a Garmin satellite navigation system has reduced overheads too, because delivery drivers do not end up meandering all over the place trying to locate their destination.

‘Our employees no longer backtrack to get to job locations,’ Cohagen says. ‘They know the most efficient way to get somewhere which cuts down, not just on fuel, but on the number of miles being put on vehicles.’

Wasteful and polluting engine idling has also been a concern of Namasco Corporation, now part of Kloeckner Metals: one of the largest metal distribution companies in North America. ‘For every hour a diesel tractor unit idles it burns approximately one gallon of fuel,’ observes director of technical services, Len Stark.

Its solution was to contact Teologis and introduce Teologis Fleet, a GPS-based fleet tracking and management software system. Idling time and speeding fell significantly in the wake of its implementation as did mileage thanks to greater efficiency: changes which reduced the business's fuel costs and shrank its carbon footprint.

‘The reduction in idling time alone helped increase profits by approximately $50,000 a year,’ says Stark. Being environmentally aware can have a positive impact on your bottom line.

Last year saw Aliso Viejo, California, USA-based Teologis join forces with leading global fuel card provider FleetCor to introduce the Teologis Universal Premium Fuel Card. The aim is to make it easier to integrate the data on fuel usage obtained from a vehicle tracking system with the data generated by a fuel card so that a fleet can obtain a more comprehensive picture of the volume of fuel it is burning and home in on any areas of waste.

One way of reducing a fleet’s CO2 output is to train your drivers to drive more frugally and use any management programmes that have been introduced as a training aid.

That is a policy pursued by SuperValu. Part of the Musgrave Group, one of Ireland’s biggest food distributors, it delivers goods to 193 independently owned stores.

With an eye to running its fleet more efficiently it teamed up with Galway-based Blue Tree and introduced its R:COM management system. It records information on excessive idling, harsh acceleration and braking, over-revving, speeding, and driving without using cruise control.

Having analysed this data, trainers then provide feedback to the company’s drivers on techniques they can use that will ensure they drive more frugally.

According to Blue Tree. R:COM can summarise individual driver performance in league tables and produce score cards for each individual which can be used as the basis for an in-house competition or an incentive scheme. It reports the performance of vehicles as well as employees – high fuel consumption may mean that there is a maintenance problem – and links events such as harsh acceleration with map location data.

Tracking is of course not just about minimising fuel bills and being kinder to the environment. It is also about security, as South Africa’s G4S Cash Solutions (SA) can testify.

After a six-month trial it has recently decided to install a fleet management system from MiX Telematics with the aim of better-protecting the significant quantities of money it moves around the country daily. It will be installed progressively in 900 cash-in-transit vehicles and 330 support vehicles.

‘An aspect we’re really excited about is the lowered risk around the delivery of security codes for the vaults and doors on our vans,’ says G4S Cash Solutions (SA) managing director, Albert Erasmus. ‘Using the MiX Telematics solution they will only become available to drivers on arrival at a customer’s site – in real time – meaning the window of risk in this part of our delivery chain will be vastly reduced.’

Also relying on MiX Telematics to help it combat crime is Thessaloniki, Greece, based international transport fleet Karassulis. Having suffered a spate of thefts it has had tracking units fitted to its trucks and trailers by Tacho Hellas, MiX’s Greek partner.

The initiative has already paid off with an attempted trailer theft in Italy thwarted. The MiX package has also allowed route scheduling and fleet utilisation to be optimised, thereby reducing fuel expenditure.

Tracking systems increasingly involve the installation of a unit in the vehicle which tells the driver if he or she is engaging in behaviour that means more petrol or diesel is being used than is necessary and prompts the individual to desist. It acts as a performance coach: something that undoubtedly appealed to IDM Trucking, based at Weyers Cave, Virginia, USA.

The system it has sourced from GreenRoad features an LED display that illuminates in red, yellow or green depending on whether the vehicle is being driven sensibly (green), the driving style is starting to deteriorate (yellow) or if risky behaviour is being indulged in (red). Reports are generated on each driver’s performance for managers to review and IDM Trucking has introduced a quarterly bonus scheme that rewards drivers depending on their safety and efficiency.

As well as improvements in safety and reduced insurance costs, GreenRoad 360 has brought IDM Trucking annual fuel cost savings worth $1,500 a vehicle according to safety director, Randy Hill.

‘It employs a holistic approach that makes it easy and cost-effective for fleets to change driver behaviour fundamentally,’ he says.

‘Our drivers have adapted well to it and have consistently exhibited green driving since it was installed,’ he added. ‘We couldn’t have asked for better results.’