Last year, a technician at Riley Plumbing and Heating got into a rollover accident with one of their trucks.
The technician said he’d hit a deer. But when shop owner Lawrence Riley reviewed the front- and back-facing dashcam video of the accident via ServiceTitan’s Fleet Pro, there was no deer in sight. Something else had caused the accident.
Nose picking.
“You could watch the guy picking his nose and wiping it on his shirt as the truck rolled over,” Riley said. “There was no deer on the video. The GPS and the video don't freakin’ lie.”
The technician was fine and has since left the residential and commercial service shop in Gardnerville, Nevada. But the $200,000 truck he was driving—which was part of Riley’s portable restroom business—took a nosedive.
Protect Against Liabilities: Fleet Pro’s video event capture aids in timely insurance claims and reduces liability, while real-time alerts notify you of route deviation and risky driving behaviors via email, text, or in-app notifications.
But the dashcam Fleet Pro feature is far from Riley's favorite.
“(Fleet Pro) makes our job costing perfect,” Riley explained. Here’s why.
Ensure Payroll Accuracy: Fleet Pro’s proprietary Automated GPS Timesheets Integration intelligently updates technician timesheets according to GPS data, saving you time and protecting you from excess wages or wage theft claims.
“We can see exactly how long (our techs) were on the job, working. And it’s not a ‘Keep the employees honest,’ thing. It’s a job costing thing,” Riley said. “(With that data), we know how to price ourselves. We know what stuff really (costs). And it just eliminates the human error of clocking in and out.”
The #1 newsletter for the trades.
Riley also likes how the GPS features allows him to refute a classic customer complaint: “The tech was only here for 15 minutes!”
“We can print off the data and send it to the customer and say, ‘Well, I saw him at your house for an hour now. You told me he was there for 15 minutes. Was he sleeping in his truck?’
“(The customer) can't argue with the GPS. The GPS doesn't lie. I mean, it takes 15 minutes (for the tech) to take their toolbag out.”
For job costing alone, Riley said that Fleet Pro is “worth every penny.” But he loves that he can utilize the dash cam footage—and be a little nosey—whenever there’s an incident.
“We had a deer accident a few years prior,” Riley said. “And now we’re kind of wondering if that was a deer.”
