Some days running a business can feel like you’re treading water just to stay afloat. But on good days business leaders will have just enough bandwidth to manage their current day while planning for tomorrow. On days like this Walker Construction’s Scales/Truck Supervising Manager, Kevin Howard, is happy that his company has the telematic tools to prepare themselves to excel in tomorrow’s business climate.

Telematics are an invaluable addition to any equipment fleet,
including compact equipment like skid steers, compact excavators, dump trucks, and even company vehicles. Here are a few ways that telematics platforms are proving their worth to this important industry segment.

Driver safety is a concern for virtually any company that has vehicles on the road. In addition to the conduct of the drivers themselves, and interactions with those around them, there is the concern of how bad driver behavior might be perceived by the public. One Georgia contractor who operates an asphalt plant for their own paving projects and others and has a division that engages in heavy civil construction projects is using FleetWatcher telematics to rein in driver behavior. Here’s how they are using technology to reduce incidents of speeding (relative to the posted speed limit), hard braking,
fast starts and hard turns among their fleet of 150 on-road vehicles.

As paving contractors and heavy construction contractors increasingly adopt technology to operate more efficiently, FleetWatcher is leading the way with seamless integration with popular software programs.  Providing a seamless flow of data to further enhance the functionality of programs like Viewpoint, B2W, OnStation, and many more.  Data from e-ticketing, cycle counts, tonnage, and more automatically flows from FleetWatcher’s Materials Management Solution (MMS) into the appropriate areas within the software programs, saving time and enhancing accuracy, efficiency, and productivity.  With the Fleetwatcher Construction Management Solution (CMS) information like hour meter readings, location, job assignment and equipment move information is available for import.  Directly importing the data eliminates manual input of data and eliminates errors caused during that process.  Additionally, data can be imported into Fleetwatcher from Vista such as project and equipment information creating a central source of truth and eliminating duplicate entry of the information.

It's as easy as tracking a pizza delivery....

With FleetWatcher's FOB Delivery Tracker, you will always know when your materials will arrive and where they are being delivered. The FOB Delivery Tracker allows you to send a delivery notification to clients when purchased material has shipped and is en route to their projects, giving them live visibility into the trucks carrying their material.

• CONEXPO is quickly approaching and we are excited to announce that we will be hosting a happy hour on Tuesday, March 14 & Thursday, March 16 from 1-5 PM! We will be giving out free cold beers and booth N12453. 

In addition to our happy hour, we will also be filming an episode of Hops & Highways live at CONEXPO. Hops & Highways is a newscast dedicated to discussing issues and topics surrounding road building. We are looking forward to joining the conversation and sharing our thoughts on the heavy highway industry.

If you plan on visiting our booth to take advantage of our happy hour event, click here to download your FREE drink ticket. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out via email at info@fleetwatcher.com.

We look forward to seeing you!

(Indianapolis, IN) – Border States Paving is a family-owned general contractor that operates 2 permanent asphalt plants as well as a one portable plant which produce asphalt for the paving projects that they complete throughout the Dakotas, Wyoming and eastern Montana. In addition to the traditional paving tools that they use daily, BSP crews have adopted technology including FleetWatcher telematics to eliminate over trucking, streamline their operations, and eliminate the waste of traditional paper tickets with e-ticketing. Early in 2022 they integrated their FleetWatcher e-ticketing with OnStation to determine exact locations more precisely for each load of asphalt placed. On a paving
project along US Highway 12 in South Dakota this technology integration not only increased their accuracy, but it also made their jobsites safer.

Earthwave has integrated their e-ticketing functionality with OnStation to allow users to pinpoint the exact Station Location where each load of asphalt is placed on a jobsite. This new functionality automatically tracks the load from the time it is loaded at the asphalt plant, through its dumping into the paver on the jobsite. The exact Station location becomes a part of the digital e-ticket, with no operator intervention required. Operators and transportation agency officials can know precisely on a jobsite where a specific load of asphalt was laid, so that if a future problem arises, they can investigate other parameters around that location, including core tests, density, drainage, or others, to determine the scope of the problem. Specific station locations on each e-ticket replace the latitude/longitude indications which are commonly included now, but which are not readily referenceable on the jobsite. 

If you've ever felt like you're juggling too many projects at once, you're not alone. Chris Higgins, the Vice President of Engineering and Construction at Scotty's Contracting & Stone can emphasize. He wakes up every day with 400 pieces of heavy equipment to allocate across projects throughout Kentucky. On a good day it's a challenge. On a rainy day it's fire drill. But Higgins is prepared, thanks to a telematics tool that collects and displays data across his entire fleet, bridging the gaps between a dozen different equipment manufacturers. 

Getting over growing pains 

Scotty's Contracting & Stone is a heavy civil and paving contractor that has served a geographic footprint that ranges from Louisville to Nashville for 50 years. In that time the company has grown from 10 employees to over 600, dispatching more than 100 trucks a day through their 14 asphalt plants and 5 stone quarries. Third party trucks are supplied with FleetWatcher as well, so that all haul trucks have the same visibility. Visibility into the entire haul fleet allows Scotty's to see bottlenecks in real time and re-route trucks around them to shorten cycle times.