Night shift and Lone Working increases Tracker needs

Having recently travelled overnight on the uk roads, i never fail to be surprised by the lack of traffic that is out there overnight. It's no wonder so many businesses are looking at increasing their lone worker and night working fleet in order to take advantage of the time and money savings.

Undertaking night and overnight work shifts come with extra safety considerations for both your employees and assets, so the rise in purchase of vehicle tracking systems and lone worker assistance is no real surprise.

Although they might seem like an unwanted cost initially, these types of tracking systems can (in the long term) be time and money savers as well as a useful KPI tool in managing your customer expectations.

Fleet Tracking Systems

Keeping your office based staff to a minimum is obviously necessary when employees on site or driving are working overnight. Using a tracking system with the personnel or vehicles will allow you to watch their movements and journey details from any internet based pc and depending on the amount of office work required to monitor this, can make it easier to manage your wage costs.

Lone worker tracking systems

If you have workers on site without a vehicle then a lone worker tracking system alone can be useful. This equipment will feed back the same information as a vehicle system, but can be kept by the worker on a belt or in a handbag for ease of transportation whilst out. It also has the added benefit of a personal alarm that can be activated in an emergency situation.

Other lone worker systems

There are many other things you can do to assist the safety of your vehicles, equipment and workers whilst they are out. Procedures such as signing in and out as well as high visability clothing can assist with this.

Haulage Industry Welcome news of Rail Freight Network – can Vehicle Tracking still help?

I was intrigued to read recently about the Network Rail plans to cut the number of lorries on the road from 2014 onwards. They are considering spending £5.6 billion on their infrastructure to support this freight network, and with the loss of the daily traffic headache it could be every business owners dream, especially within the transport industry. So if this is your future plan for your business freight and logistics could vehicle tracking systems still be of assistance to you?

This question got me thinking about the logistics of consignment tracking instead for business owners and I had to ask myself the question “will businesses still be able to manage customer expectations if you are not in control of your own haulage?

I have mainly spoken about Vehicle Tracking and its advantages on here, but Consignment Trackers also offer useful help and information for Logistics Teams. Whether you are sending one small parcel or one massive container full of products, the consignment tracker can be fitted to report back on their progress and the size of system doesn’t normally vary.

The tracking device is small and like other trackers can be packed with your goods easily. The software used online is exactly the same as that of the vehicle tracker and any PC connected to the internet can access the information. Once the package is fitted you are ready to collect data about the ETA, current location, journey time and more.

Specifically these products are useful for those that are shipping to customers, but if you have a priority package that you are sending to another warehouse, office or internal depot then having the ability to track and trace the item might be invaluable.

So, in conclusion, on the up side it seems the changes could mean a reduction in costs and “on the road time” for consignments being moved by businesses and although traditional Vehicle Trackers can’t be used if you hire a 3rd party company to complete your deliveries, at least there is an opportunity to use an alternative product and manage those expectations remotely.