Running a large haulage firm tends to mean you have to employ a fair amount of vehicles and drivers to use them and, unfortunately this can sometimes make your company a target. Lorry hijacks were a common occurrence in the 80\'s and my firm fell foul of one or two of them. We were ahead of the curve back then and were one of the first haulage companies to take the branding off the sides of our lorries so nobody knew what we were carrying and though it didn\'t stop it entirely, it definitely cut down on the opportunistic attacks.

When I came to open up a side business as a major partner in a taxi firm, I was intent on staying ahead of the curve again and I began to look into ways to cut down on fuel usage and protect the investment we were making in these vehicles. Red diesel was one idea that came to mind, but obviously that\'s illegal, so we decided on implementing car fleet management.

A car fleet management solution is exactly what its name suggests - a way to manage the vehicles you employ. There are several levels at which these units operate; from simple GPS tracking through to more comprehensive measures which will monitor the fuel consumption, whether the doors are open, how well it\'s being driven and even the vehicle\'s mechanical health. We opted for one of the more comprehensive options as I\'m a firm believer in spending money to make money and our new vehicles were outfitted with the onboard computers while we installed the software on our PCs. We were soon able to tell where our cars were at all times, monitor their fuel consumption and see if there was any mechanical failure about to happen.

I didn\'t choose to implement a car fleet management solution in my new business to play \'Big Brother\' with my employees; it\'s purely a way of saving money, keeping us efficient and keeping us reaching our customers quicker than the others, thus keeping us ahead of the curve. The GPS tracking has proven itself to be invaluable since our operations staff know exactly where a vehicle is at all times and with a quick online traffic search, they can find them the best route to go, saving on time and fuel. Also, knowing the mechanical health of our cars and if some are using more petrol than others helps with maintenance and keeping our overheads down, meaning we are faster and cheaper than many of our competitors.

Employing car fleet management for my side business has been so useful and has helped make that business so successful that I am currently looking into implementing it in my day job at the haulage firm. Success in business is all about staying ahead of the current trends and utilising the latest technology on the market is an excellent way of doing that.