DCW gets connected with Fleetclear

The family-run firm continues to lead the industry in offering innovative, sustainable waste collection and recycling to its customers across Devon, Cornwall, and Somerset. Recently, DCW even started to manufacture its own range of recycled furniture products including plastic outdoor furniture, fencing, decking, dog agility and children’s play equipment.

DCW has a large and diverse fleet ranging from LCVs for the sales team, transit vans to 18t delivery vehicles, 26t &32t Refuse Collection vehicles (RCVs), plus top loaders, front end loaders, skip lorries and RoRos.  The company was looking for a fleet wide, easy to implement technological solution to keep track of all its vehicles and monitor its driver workforce, who make up around 70% of DCW employees.

Having experienced issues with previous suppliers DCW decided to join forces with Fleetclear, firstly equipping its vehicles with the company’s market leading RXLite LIVE camera recording systems and more recently consolidating all the information from its vehicle safety technology and vehicle monitoring equipment via Fleetclear Connect – a new, easy to use, web-based fleet software platform.

A safer, more efficient, and compliant fleet

Demonstrating the very latest in fleet technology, Fleetclear Connect is an end-to-end solution for fleet operators, connecting all vehicle safety technology in one place, combining hardware with advanced data analysis and processing techniques, and with a comprehensive suite of compliance and reporting tools. It brings together real-time tracking and telematics data including fuel, carbon, and electric vehicle analysis, with operational safety technology, driver behaviour and compliance monitoring.  Event reconstruction with web sharing and live video integration are all part of the package. And, crucially, the system is suitable for all vehicle types and can be integrated modularly and tailored to suit the individual needs of customers’ fleets.

‘We’ve probably already saved the cost of the cameras already.’

Richard Smith, Commercial Waste Operations Manager at DCW, commented: “We now have full LIVE cameras on all our vehicles and thanks to Fleetclear’s superior technology we can download the footage within minutes. In the case of any incidents, it’s crucial to get the information to our insurance company as soon as a possible. The footage from the RX Lite camera system is so clear that where there is doubt over the cause of an accident it can help to disprove any false claims immediately. In fact, we’ve probably already saved the cost of the cameras already.”

With DCW’s previous camera systems, recovering footage was very difficult. The software was problematic, and it could take days to get the correct piece of footage relating to a specific incident.

Richard added: “With Fleetclear, they check the health of the cameras remotely, and deal with any problems before we are even aware of them. So, we know the cameras are always functioning.  With our previous system, we had to manually extract the hard drive from the relevant vehicle and then sometimes we’d discover too late that the camera in question hadn’t been working for weeks!”

Saving time and energy

The Fleetclear Connect footage sharing system enables users to send weblinks to specific footage.

Richard explains: “It helps to save a lot of time and energy that used to be spent carrying out investigations. For example, if a member of the public is making a claim that one of our vehicles has damaged their car, we can find footage from the precise location and time when our vehicle was in the vicinity, in minutes. We can get to the root of the issue immediately and even send them the footage. We find that in many cases these ‘complaints’ miraculously disappear at the point when the footage establishes beyond doubt that our vehicle was nowhere near the property or car in question.”

Collaboration and partnership

A specific requirement from DCW was that they needed tachograph information incorporated into the Fleetclear Connect system.  

Richard explains: “It was important for us to have tachograph information integrated into the system, although Fleetclear Connect didn’t include this element at the time. However, once we mentioned it, they had no hesitation in developing and building this into the system as a feature. They threw all their resources at it. We like their collaborative, partnership way of working. They recognise that different businesses have different needs; it isn’t a one size fits all approach.”

As a result, DCW now has one system with all the information available to view on one customisable dashboard. Not only can DCW track vehicles LIVE and view telematics information, but they can also identify individual drivers and monitor different aspects of driver and vehicle performance, throughout every moment of operation.  Data on acceleration, cornering, harsh braking, fuel efficiency, geofencing and routing are all features of Fleetclear Connect that DCW are looking to use in the next phase of integration.

Richard added: “Fleetclear Connect is a powerful tool for fleet operators. We don’t want the hassle of using multiple systems; we want to go to one place and access all the information we need, immediately. If there is a potential incident we need to know when and where it happened, so that we can take appropriate action. With Fleetclear Connect we can create driver records and scores and send relevant information to managers to feed into training plans.”

After-care

Fleetclear has a very proactive approach to checking the health of its customers’ equipment. Regular, remote monthly reviews of vehicle safety technology such as cameras are part of their managed service package. One of the most important aspects of DCW’s decision to switch to Fleetclear from its previous supplier was after sales support.

Richard commented: “We lost faith with our previous supplier as things just weren’t being fixed quickly enough and it was difficult to get hold of someone to come on site. We’ve worked with Fleetclear already when we switched to their camera systems so we knew the high standard of service we could expect. They’ve held our hand every step of the way, both on the software and hardware side of things. We have their mobile numbers, and they are very quick to respond to any requests.”