“The whole system is an awakening. It’s been a great program.”
– Mike Masterson
Company: ISOTECH Pest Management
Industry: Services
Fleet Size: 80+ vehicles
Web: ISOTECH Website
“Verminators” on Discovery Channel
Trackable Results
- Reduced accident rates by 80% over four months
- Increased service call response times
- Streamlined vehicle maintenance program
Challenges
Mike Masterson is CEO of ISOTECH Pest Management Inc. in Riverside, California. Mike and his friend and co-owner, Kevin Alden, set out to create a new approach to pest management that combines man-animal-science and technology. This formula has revolutionized pest management nationwide. It has also become a popular show on the Discovery Channel, “The Verminators”.
Like most businesses, they started small, with a handful of trucks. Early on they implemented a vehicle tracking system to monitor their vehicles in the field. But as the business grew, they decided to look at other options.
“We had [another GPS fleet tracking provider],” Masterson said. “As we grew we had issues. It was great with 6-10 trucks, but with 70 – 80 it was not good. Running reports was a problem. Our people weren’t running reports we needed because they were so cumbersome.”
Why were reports so important?
“Economics was a factor,” replied Masterson. “In tough economic times people start looking to see what can be cut back on. We had customers claiming techs didn’t show up.”
How GPS Trackit Helped
In 2012, ISOTECH decided to make a change and started looking for a new fleet management system. They chose GPS Trackit’s Fleet Manager. After working with the system for several months, Masterson summed up his experience by quoting Tony the Tiger – “GRRRRRREAT!”
Today, ISOTECH has over 8,000 customers, from San Diego to San Francisco. Their trucks cover a lot of territory. Fleet Manager keeps them all straight. And the Fleet Manager reports are easy to run and contain detailed information. Now if a customer questions a bill, it’s all there in black and white.
“I can run a report to find out what time the tech showed up, what time he shut off his engine, and what time he left,” said Masterson. “Our Operations Manager loves it because of the export capabilities. It’s so much easier. He can put the data in a file and load it into Microsoft Excel. [Our previous provider] couldn’t do that.”
Masterson and the team at ISOTECH have found many other benefits to using Fleet Manager.
“It’s helped us with our credibility. When I need to know where a technician is, I can look and see where every one of our trucks is. Vehicle trails are visible on a map. The color coding makes it easy to read. We can see how they’re traveling to track fuel usage.”
Masterson is also enthusiastic about Fleet Manager’s flexibility.
“It’s easy to make changes when trucks are reassigned. We keep vehicles to under 200,000 miles. The GPS devices are easy to swap out. The nice thing too is we’re buying three new trucks this week. It’s just so easy to put it into the system. The ability to add and delete vehicles is phenomenal.”
But the flexibility extends to the Fleet Manager system’s security.
“We also have different people monitor different drivers. We can restrict access to specific groups.”
According to Masterson, ISOTECH makes extensive use of Fleet Manager’s alerts.
“Text alerts are great. They’re easy to create for specific users and drivers. We use speeding and idling alerts. Idling a vehicle every day is hard on the engine. Speeding alerts have helped us educate our drivers. The number of tickets our drivers are getting has gone down.”
The maintenance of so many vehicles is a challenge. Fleet Manager has helped them streamline their preventative maintenance.
“We’ve set up a very proactive program,” said Masterson. “Mileage and engine hours can be easily monitored. We used to have our techs call with mileage for maintenance purposes. What we can do now is monitor that with the built-in tracker. We can tell the tech when they’re due and to start looking for a place to do the maintenance.”
ISOTECH also makes use of the Geofencing and Landmarks features in Fleet Manager.
“We set up Geofences for each truck. We can see when they leave the area. We also use Landmarks for our largest customers so we can get the closest vehicle there faster. It’s allowing us to reroute our technicians.”
“We’re trying to get there the most efficient way. It’s saving time. We don’t have to call or send mass pages. We’re able to be more strategic.”
With a service fleet of 80 trucks covering such a large area, the opportunity for accidents was huge. According to Masterson, before implementing Fleet Manager their insurance company was on the verge of dropping them.
“In the four months from October of last year to today we’ve reduced our accidents by 80%,” said Masterson. “Accidents have gone down, speeding has been reduced. We’ve had a decrease in vehicles breaking down. We used to have a lot of accidents. Now we don’t.”
Masterson is pleased with their decision to go with Fleet Manager.
“The whole system is an awakening. It’s been a great program.”
