United Rentals [NYSE: URI]

“Every hour per dollar saved improves a construction firm’s outlook in today’s increasingly competitive construction environment. Telematics devices, in tandem with fleet management software, can help owners stretch their fleet’s value, make their equipment more productive and stay profitable.”

Equipment telematics can do more to improve fleet management than many construction companies realize. When used with fleet management software, telematics hardware goes beyond GPS tracking for construction equipment. It provides not only real-time location data but also visibility into asset utilization, engine hours, fuel usage and more.

At a time of tight construction budgets and supply chain issues that have made heavy equipment harder to purchase and more expensive, companies need to make the most of their owned equipment. Leveraging the data provided by telematics devices can help this effort.

A contractor’s construction equipment may have a telematics device with a built-in GPS sensor already installed. If not, companies, such as equipment rental service providers, can add telematics devices to almost any piece of mobile equipment and help a construction company use the data to the best effect.

Here are six ways telematics can help fleet managers achieve a better understanding of their equipment’s performance, condition, and utilization. With this intelligence, equipment owners can make their fleets more productive and last longer.

Find your equipment.

An equipment GPS tracker, when it feeds data into fleet management software, such as United Rentals’ Total Control, provides immediate visibility into all of the equipment on a map. This location information ends the hunt for that backhoe someone parked out of sight or moved to another jobsite.

Eliminating time wasted on equipment searches helps keep projects on schedule. GPS tracking for construction equipment can also solve the mystery of who is hoarding all the air compressors, generators, or skid steers, so a contractor does not purchase or rent more unneeded equipment.

Optimize preventive maintenance.

An effective preventive maintenance program minimizes unplanned equipment downtime, improves equipment performance, and prolongs the useful life of equipment, which helps protect a contractor’s equipment budget. With telematics device data, companies can optimize equipment maintenance schedules.

A manufacturer may suggest time-interval-based maintenance for a piece of equipment every six months, for example. But just-in-time maintenance based on engine hours or usage hours may also be beneficial. It helps ensure that under-servicing heavily used equipment or over-servicing equipment used less often does not happen.

Preventive maintenance is critical, but it may slip through the cracks if companies do not have a system that reminds them. Total control, for example, can provide service alerts to help stay on top of maintenance even when equipment teams are overwhelmed with other tasks.

Foil thieves and unauthorized users.

Equipment theft is a major issue on construction sites, and recovery rates are low. Construction equipment telematics changes the equation in favor of owners.

With the help of telematics devices, a good fleet management system lets contractors draw geofences - virtually boundaries - around equipment and configure geofence alerts that tell them the minute a piece of equipment enters or exits the geofence.