How We Use GPS To Benefit Our Clients

If you use a global positioning system (GPS) in the vehicle you drive, you know how handy it is.

Maybe you’d even be lost without it.

Here at Level Green Landscaping, we feel the same way. But our GPS does a lot more than route our crews around town.

Our high-tech system has all sorts of handy features, from encouraging safe driving to providing court-admissible proof that snow removal services happened at a particular site.

Our GPS even benefits you, the customer — maybe more than you might think.

Brad Butler, Level Green corporate manager, sheds some light on several ways we use this indispensable tool to benefit our clients.

Keeping Track Of Our Snow Vehicles

In a snow emergency, we know exactly where all the vehicles in our fleet are, thanks to GPS.

“We can look up and locate vehicles, not just from our desktop computers, but from the mobile apps on our operation managers’ smartphones,” Butler says. “Then we can get those vehicles where they need to be, faster.”

Snow Liability

If somebody slips and falls on your property, gets injured and tries to blame you, can you prove you had a snow and ice removal company clear your lot and walkways?

You can if Level Green does your snow removal. Our GPS offers that proof, and it’s admissible in court.

The American Bar Association decided in 2014 that because of its accuracy, GPS technology can replace expert testimony in cases in which a disputed fact concerns the location of a person or a vehicle at a particular time.

So if your snow removal company uses GPS tracking on its vehicles, you can prove when the snow removal services were performed.

Our GPS tracks where each of our vehicles is, what kind of services it provides, when the vehicle arrives at your site and when it leaves.

“We can look up the vehicle assigned to any location and the GPS shows its history,” Butler says. “It shows when the ignition turns on and when it turns off. It shows the vehicle’s route to the job site, it shows the vehicle on site moving around. It shows vehicle number 123 is a plow truck with a salt sprayer.

“We can print that history out for the customer or send it electronically,” he says. “It proves they had service at that site at that time. And all that information is saved for a year on our website.”

Efficiency

The same terrible winter weather that makes you huddle indoors sends snow removal crews out into the fray, driving on hazardous roads and trying to service each customer quickly.

GPS helps us do this as efficiently as possible.

“We route all of our vehicles using GPS,” Butler says. “If a truck has six jobs in a day, GPS helps us make their route  more efficient, so they're not driving way out of their way.”

Containing Fuel Costs

Sometimes, you have to crack down on waste. Our GPS sends us alerts when drivers are wasting gas by idling their trucks unnecessarily. That saves us money and helps us run more efficiently. Ultimately, that benefits the customer, too.

Driver Safety

We all want our drivers to be as safe as possible out on the roads. GPS allows us to set a speed limit threshold, then the system sends managers text alerts if drivers exceed it. Alerts are available for other driving habits, too, from hard braking to quick accelerating.

Security

If any of our vehicles move before or after work hours, the GPS sends an alert. So if vehicles are being stolen, we know about it.

Accountability

Sometimes, you need proof of where your crews were at a certain time — or where they weren’t.

Glass breaking is part of landscape maintenance. We train our crews in safety measures on how to prevent it, but accidents happen, and sometimes a weed eater shoots a stray rock through a window. When this happens, we always replace the window.

It’s easy to blame the landscaper. But with GPS, we can prove if our crews were on site at the time of the breakage — or if they weren’t.

Not All GPS Systems Are Equal

Most any commercial landscaping company of our size will have GPS on its vehicles, but not all GPS is created equally. A lot of companies are selling GPS, ranging from low-end lackluster systems to some so complicated you would need a full-time staff person just to process all the information.

At Level Green, we invested in a high-quality system, with driver safety options and a nice printout of service history our clients can use.

Why You Want Your Landscaping Company To Use GPS

Some of the handy features of GPS are obviously beneficial to our clients, like proving our snow removal crews were reliably on your property, making things safe.

Other features may not be as clearly a benefit, but examine them all together and they point to our commitment to run a safe, reliable, responsible company.

And that benefits everybody.

Find Your Way To Level Green

We’d love to tell you more about our commitment to excellence. Give us a call.

Our service area includes Washington DC, Maryland and parts of Virginia. We focus on commercial property maintenance for offices, retail spaces, mixed-use sites, HOAs/condominiums, distribution centers, municipalities and institutions.

Contact us at 202-544-0968 or by filling out our form online. You can also schedule a free consultation to talk with us about how we can enhance and maintain your commercial landscape.

We’d love to hear from you.