Transport management: plunging into CAN data analytics

Would you stop to pick up a penny? I don’t think so. But think of it: if a GPS tracking system saves one penny for a ride, and it all goes to the fleet manager, he could get an iPhone Xr for his wife very soon. Just kidding. 

The economy is tens of thousands of dollars more

The article is about how to cut costs on fleet management even if the vehicles are already equipped with telematics. As exemplified by a large Russian carrier and Gurtam partner Geoservice. 

Cutting costs: switching from a factory-supplied system to Wialon

The monitoring system in the client's company solves two major tasks: 

1. Tracking fuel consumption and mileage 

By altering odometer readings you can steal up to 120 liters from a single vehicle a month. The customer has 845 trucks which means the loss of 100,000 liters. 

2. Exploitation control 

Reckless driving accounts for 170,000 accidents in Russia annually. Be it an accident or critical breakdown – this is more than financial loss. It means that your asset doesn't work for your business for several days (= a carrier stops transportation activities).

The customer's factory tracking system addressed both these challenges. That didn’t stop the management from finding new tools to cut costs. The last tool of that kind is called Wialon. At Gurtam megabooth in Moscow, our partner made the client an offer that was hard to resist. To make a long story short:

Step one. Switching to Wialon

The company fleet was equipped with telematics long before Wialon platform. They employed the tracking systems from Mercedes, Renault, Scania. These are pricy, at least in Russia. So Wialon was considered to be more cost-effective. 

Step two. Implementing the new system into the client's business processes 

The specifications demanded fleet management based on 16 parameters received from CAN bus. Geoservice delivered the same telematics solution with Wialon.  

Let’s see how they achieved this when working with vehicles from different manufacturers.   

The solution: reading data from different types of CAN 

For this project, Geoservice cooperates with a hardware manufacturer that specializes in CAN bus data reading. 

Together with HW specialists, our partner developed software to parse data from onboard vehicle computer and custom firmware for trackers to decode data from Mercedes, Renault, and Scania CAN. Now telematics equipment receives data from CAN bus and sends it to Wialon in the uniform format. The dispatcher sees everything happening with a vehicle in real-time and in Wialon reports.  

Moreover, Wialon sends all the parameters to the client's ERP via API. This means the data become instantly available for the company’s accounting. 

The results 

The customer acquired a more cost-effective solution saving the quality of telematics data. At the moment, Wialon constantly controls the following aspects of fleet operation: 

• average speed and speedings of up to 82 km/h; 

• stops;

• brakings (including harsh ones);

• fuel consumption (average and in motion);

• cruise control and coasting mileage;

• braking with jake and pedal brake distances;

• average vehicle weight;  

• RPMs and idling.

And while the data quality remains the same, they got advanced system capabilities as a bonus. 

The client controls fillings by means of fuel cards. To avoid fuel frauds they developed a service to compare the volume of fuel filled and actually appeared in the tank. It supports fuel cards of the major providers in Russia and ready for further integrations. Furthermore, they are now implementing Eco Driving to control driver behavior. 

This is how a service provider got plus 845 vehicles in Wialon and a major carrier in Russian as a client. Geoservice are ready to share experience, contact us at marketing@gurtam.com and we’ll specify technical details of the telematics project for you. Write to the same e-mail to share your success story on Gurtam blog and become the hero of the day. Look forward to hearing from you!