Midland Door Services

Vehicle tracking opens doors to effciency

A company that specialises in installing and repairing commercial doors has seen its running costs slashed after it fitted Navman Wireless vehicle tracking to its fleet of vans.

Working for a number of blue-chip companies such as Tesco and builders merchant Selco, Midland Door Services’ fleet of seven vans travel the length and breadth of the UK, from its base in the West Midlands, to install and repair doors on commercial buildings.

Mindful of the long journeys that are often involved for the company’s team of eight field engineers, managing director John Lunt decided to install vehicle tracking to provide him with more control of his fleet. He chose Navman Wireless on the recommendation of a trusted business contact.

“There are certainly a lot of rogue companies out there in the vehicle tracking market, but Navman Wireless’s reputation is second to none so I had no doubts about opting for their vehicle tracking system,” says Lunt.

“Savings have far exceeded expectations...” Lunt knew there were savings to be made by installing vehicle tracking but says the amounts of money involved have taken him by surprise. Since the system was installed, exaggerated overtime
claims are a thing of the past.

“As a former field engineer I know that these guys will always overestimate the time they think a job will take,” explains Lunt. “I know because I used to do it myself and I’m wise to all the tricks. “If the traffic’s bad it might take as long as they expect but with good traffic conditions they can easily save an hour or two.

“The result of having vehicle tracking on board is that there is now no room for doubt and we can schedule jobs accurately.”

Lunt says that for Midland Door Services, the bottom line is that vehicle tracking is saving the company two hours a day in overtime for each of its eight engineers.

“I’ve calculated that it’s saving me £28,000 a year in overtime costs alone,” he says.

Reliable evidence prevents tax bills

For Midland Door Services, being able to prove that the company vehicles are only used for work purposes means both John and his engineers need not worry about benefit in kind payments. For a company allowing employees unrestricted private mileage in their vehicles, each employee can be hit with a bill of as much as £3,500.

The company will also find National Insurance bills increase by up to £400 per employee unless they can prove how many private miles their fleet clocks up. However, Lunt says further impressive savings have been made by eradicating private use of company vans by staff.

“I estimate it used to cost me up to £100 a week per vehicle,  ust for fuel used by staff outside work. By prohibiting private use of our vans and being able to monitor that with total accuracy, I’m saving myself over £30,000 a year in fuel.”

Midland Door Services schedule to receive a report every Monday morning giving definitive details of van movements over the weekend.

“The reporting functionality of the Navman Wireless system is extremely useful,” says Lunt. “We plan to explore this further and I am particularly interested in the maintenance reports. Knowing for example when tax, insurance and services are due for each vehicle would be really useful.”

Vehicle tracking every time

Not only is Navman Wireless vehicle tracking cutting costs for the company, it is also improving employee output and enables Lunt to monitor how productively staff are working.

“We sold the idea to our staff with the concepts of more efficient, safer driving and warding off the taxman by being able to prove that the vans were not used privately. They’ve all been happy with that and they know it’s not a big brother system that’s being imposed on them - there are advantages for them too.”

“It is so useful in so many ways because of the variety of data it can provide and the phenomenal savings it has produced for us.” Lunt adds: “We also use a different software system to plan and schedule our workload but even with this, I would still choose to have vehicle tracking every time.