Q: You’ve mentioned that having accurate-to-the-minute location data is vital for you. Can you tell us why, and how ClearPathGPS is helping?

We need precise data on our technicians’ whereabouts for a few reasons. One is that we do a lot of work for the state of New York, and they require certified payroll data. Having the ClearPathGPS trackers on all our vehicles means we can give our government customers exact start and end times on every job—with documentation to prove it.

Another reason having to-the-minute location data is so valuable is that New York State imposes a Highway Use Tax on vehicles like ours. Manually calculating the details of each truck’s time on highways throughout the year would be an enormous time-drain. But now we have all that data in our ClearPathGPS account, and we can pull those reports with a few clicks. That saves our managers so much time and makes our jobs so much easier.

I’ve also found significant business value from knowing the precise start and end times for various types of jobs. It helps me more accurately estimate new jobs, so our customers have a better idea of what our services will cost. And it helps me keep our technicians accountable and productive throughout the day.

Q: How’d you find out about ClearPathGPS? Did you go looking for GPS fleet tracking services when you became president of the company?

Luckily, I didn’t have to. I was at a Mr. Rooter onboarding meeting in California, and another franchise owner couldn’t stop raving about ClearPathGPS. He showed me the mobile app, and I immediately saw the value of having all this data at my fingertips. 

So, one of my first decisions as president was to sign up with ClearPathGPS, and I’ve been adding GPS trackers—and even the dashcams—to my fleet ever since.

Q: You’ve said ClearPathGPS is saving you money in many ways. Can you share a few examples?

Sure! First, there were direct savings from lowering our mobile phone expenses. The previous owners were paying about $1,000 a month in cell phone bills and using the phones to tally our technicians’ hours worked for payroll. But the method didn’t really work—it was mostly a guesstimate. 

Then I switched over to ClearPathGPS, and now I had accurate tracking data on our vehicles. So, I was able to reduce our cell phone usage because we didn’t need to supply our technician’s company phones anymore. The move to ClearPathGPS let me cut our company’s cell phone bill by 60%.

Another direct savings we’ve had thanks to switching to ClearPathGPS, is that I discovered with the old system of tracking jobs —which were based on those cell phone ‘guesstimates’—was that we were wildly overpaying in many cases. Now that I had to-the-minute location data, I knew exactly when our guys started a job and when they finished. That made our payroll much more accurate—which, as it turned out, meant less expensive.

Q: How are you using ClearPathGPS with ServiceTitan? And how is the combination of these apps improving your business?

ServiceTitan is great for helping our technicians mark jobs complete, so we can check-in and see their most recent job and how many they’ve handled to that point in the day.

But what we also needed—which ClearPathGPS gives us—is the ability to see exactly when they arrived at a job site, how long they spent there, where they’re headed next, and even the route they’re taking from job to job.

So, now we have both ServiceTitan and ClearPathGPS open on our monitors, side by side, throughout the day. ServiceTitan lets us keep up with the status of open and upcoming jobs, and ClearPathGPS lets us know from minute to minute exactly where all our technicians are. And that means if a customer calls the office with a job request, we can figure out immediately—right then, while we’re still on the phone—which technician to send, and about when the customer can expect the visit.

Q: Before we let you go… any surprise benefits of using ClearPathGPS?

We had an interesting situation recently. One of our technicians got a parking ticket while he was out on a job. When he brought it to us, he said he was in the right, that he was parked legally. So… was he?

We used the ticket’s timestamp to isolate the vehicle’s location at that time using our ClearPathGPS account. The data in ClearPathGPS was so granular that we were able to see within a few feet where he’d been parked. Turns out, he was on the wrong side of the road for that time of day. The ticket was valid.

Now, that turned out to be a teachable moment for this technician, and not much of a hassle otherwise for us. But if we didn’t have this super-accurate location data, we might have spent more time and resources pursuing the ticket—which, it turns out, would’ve been wasted effort on our part. ClearPathGPS saved our company time and money yet again!

The right GPS tracking solution lowers costs, improves operations, and helps your business run without blind spots

We’re grateful to Catrina for sharing real-world examples of how ClearPathGPS is helping Mr. Rooter Plumbing of Rochester to increase visibility into its daily operations, save time compiling data, and improve the company’s already outstanding service to customers.

ClearPathGPS also works with many other franchise owners across field service businesses, so we understand the unique fleet-related challenges facing these companies, and how to solve them.

At ClearPathGPS, we are focused on helping our customers improve their operations and bottomline. Our top-rated GPS fleet tracking solutions provide real-time data insights and tools needed to more effectively manage the vehicles, people, and assets businesses send into the field everyday. Can ClearPathGPS help your operations get better results? Let’s find out – request a demo or contact us today.