Your Fleet Is a Lawsuit Waiting to Happen

TDD EP53 Full Edit

Max Clark: [00:00:00] Chris, one of the things that we have in tech is we have lots of solutions with no problems. And you hear all these like, bombastic statements and, and you know, like, oh, this technology is gonna revolutionize everything. But, but it never really, a lot of times it doesn't connect.

And you can see corporate marketing dollars get invested in these things. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna call people out by name even though I really am desperately wanting to 5G and edge computing. But, um. , I feel like is misunderstood really comes into what's available now in fleet monitoring and telematics.

And we're gonna talk about that a little bit. But if you could start and give me, um, give me a quick background. We're gonna talk about fleet, a lot of vehicles accompany and, um, and what was going on with them and how you fixed it.

Chris Johnson: Absolutely Max. Thank you so much. So a lot of times we talk to fleet customers and we expect that they have the same problems around, uh. [00:01:00] Fleet management inefficiencies or maintenance issues or basic compliance issues around drivers, uh, with location, you know, making sure they're at the right place at the right time.

Uh, but what happened slowly in the marketplace was the ability for a fleet telematics solution to affect the frequency and cost of accidents and claims, uh, with the safety technology and the innovations and the evolution of the technologies to include video. So working with a customer, uh, we had a specific customer who came to us, uh, by the name of a PG Electric, right.

And they have probably about 130 vehicles located in the Florida area. Uh, and they're in the construction and field services vertical, right? So when we came to them and we had asked them, you know, what issues are you experiencing right now? You know, it. was. I guess more anything to me eye-opening, uh, at that point about how much [00:02:00] that a customer like that was looking for, a way to improve driver safety, to reduce operational risk, and really increase accountability across the fleet, Right. The leadership was also, of course, looking for a cost saving opportunity, uh, in fuel usage and maintenance, uh, while altogether reinforcing a strong safety culture at the organization. So one of the ways that could be accomplished is with a traditional fleet telematics solution, otherwise known as a GPS tracking solution. 

Max Clark: I mean, because you hear all these brandings, I was gonna get into this, like IOT is now buzzed and it's like 5G this and like that, blah blah, that, you know, so, good. So what I mean GPS tracking solution, right? A little bit simpler, but you know, fleet, fleet, telematics, industry term GPS tracking, you know, for, for simple, you know, simplification.

Chris Johnson: Absolutely. And Max, it's all in that umbrella of the IO ot. Uh, the cool thing about what I do, and I didn't even realize it at the time, it wasn't even called iot. That's how long I've unfortunately been in the industry, used to be called [00:03:00] machine to machine, and it's the same technology. It's you plug in a device, it that mobilizes data being captured from a machine and put it into the cloud.

Give it a portal to give you some visibility and, uh, the ability to make some actionable insight intelligence type of decisions. That's it. Fleet telematics or fleet GPS tracking, whatever you would like to call it, is one of the more mature technologies that are out there. And a, and the company that we were working with, a PG was already had a, a tracking solution, right?

But when we were able to speak with them and kind of go through what our technology could employ and, but generally a fleet telematics solution that now includes video driver behavior monitoring and coaching, we're able to help check all the boxes for them. Uh, So real-time GPS tracking check AI powered dash cams, yes, the dash cam, that every time [00:04:00] the driver is eating or drinking or smoking or closing their eyes and falling asleep or looking at the window for too long, or picking up their phone and texting.

The ability to warn them in real time to correct their action. And then if they don't, then record the video, send it to your manager for a coaching session. Right. 

Max Clark: any, 

Chris Johnson: Uh. 

Max Clark: running a business, you know, and you go through an insurance policy and you go through your, you know, normal, you know, general liability, professional liability, E and o, EPLI, anything, these things, you get into a section around. Cars. Right. Do your employees drive cars? Do they drive your cars?

They drive their own cars and. Y you know, without even getting into a fleet of like owned vehicles, there's already implied risk that comes to the company. If a person is driving a car to go to a company thing, that then gets into an accident. And when I'm, when I'm listening to you talk about this and you say 130 vehicles, all of a sudden you get into this thing where it's like, okay, you have 130 heavy moving objects like out in the world that are, that are going around and, and.[00:05:00] 

one be a ticking time bomb to you. How, how big of a problem is this a company with a fleet, you know, I mean, here, right? They have 130 trucks. They've got people driving the trucks. Like how, you know, you've, you've got, like, you're putting somebody in a truck and sending 'em off into the world and saying, okay, go.

Don't drive over a kitten now. but what does this actually mean in terms of, of like risk or occurrences of risk, or occurrence of like accidents into a company, you know? For a hundred cars, like, you know, what kind of, what kind of stats are they dealing with? Um, are you seeing. 

Chris Johnson: Yeah, you drilled immediately right into the heart of it. When I put myself in the seat of a business owner who owns and operates a commercial fleet, not only is it one of their biggest expenses, it is by far one of their biggest risks and they're mil, to your point, they're moving billboards of your business [00:06:00] and the way that the country works from a litigation perspective.

And this is unfortunate, only 30% of all accidents maybe are the fault of the commercial truck driver or the commercial driver in an accident with a consumer or passenger vehicle. Yet, if it goes all the way to, uh, settlement and trial and all that stuff, 70% of the time, right, it, they get dinged, they get blamed, they get an adverse claim against them. So, what can you do, right? What, what tools can you employ to minimize risk and improve the frequency and costs of accidents and claims, or diminish it? Honestly with a, a [00:07:00] safety technology, you know, that's what we talk to our fleet customers about, because this platform, this technology is like a silent passenger in the vehicle, and it's really one of the only buttons left to press to minimize risk.

And, but it, it's really max not just the technology and that risk that you, so uh, you know, eloquently pointed out that a commercial fleet or a commercial business with a fleet has, it's what technology can you use to help develop a safety culture to eliminate the accident? The last that I'll leave you with, max is we hired at Azuga a third party, uh, to come in and.

We asked them what our impact was, in the fleet industry, and they looked at all of our numbers objectively and looked at our customer data, and they realized that this year alone, Azuga and Bridgestone are [00:08:00] going to eliminate 11,000 accidents from ever occurring. Right? So the proof, how do I prove an accident that never occurred?

You know, you, you look at a company's loss runs or the accidents that they had the year before and how many claims they put into their insurance company versus the ones that they did this year. um, when you apply the approximate and very unfortunate 0.71 fatality rate on that 11,000 number aga easily are gonna help a hundred people in saving their lives this year alone.

And that's just aga. We have plenty of competitors and thankfully in this industry with the 30 million commercial vehicles, it's about 18 million of them have this technology, right? Not maybe the cameras yet, but at least the GPS. And that's what I wake up in the morning for. That's the impact that I want to make.

And that is the impact that we can [00:09:00] have on our commercial fleet customers with this technology. What do you think? 

Max Clark: so what was, um, you said a PG made a note here. A PG already had GPS trackers. They already had something in their trucks. What were they not getting out of their existing trackers that they needed to change?

Chris Johnson: Yeah. And um, that was the best part of talking to customers in the year 2025 about, uh, fleet iot. 

Max Clark: Mm-hmm.

Chris Johnson: It's traditionally, they have a tracking solution, uh, and that's how the technology started. You install a little box in the vehicle, it has cellular connectivity, and it has a GPS. A chip set in it and it could tell you what the vehicle is.

And there's a lot of things you can do with that. You could do routing more efficiently. You could make sure that when the drivers, uh, get to the LO location they get to and you put a geofence around that location, you're only paying them for the time they're spending there. So it helps affect payroll and overtime.

So that's how it started. [00:10:00] And then when you talk to a customer like that, since they implemented it, a few technologies have evolved. One of them was the accelerometer. The accelerometer, or being a GForce sensor. So the ability to use accelerometer and pick up g-forces to actually determine things like, uh, hard braking, sudden acceleration, hard cornering, and accidents, right? So what can you do with that data? You could build a driver scorecard. This is something that the company didn't have and they were able to stack rank their drivers from the best to the ones that need the most coaching. Using an algorithm of all of that driver behavior data. 'cause the technology evolved to include the G four sensor.

And from there they were able to obviously have the ability to identify and coach that bottom 20% of drivers, right? And then another feature would be to allow them to see their driver score themselves on their mobile device and gamify that to show them [00:11:00] their driver score versus the other drivers. So expose that to the driver and then you'll see the driver scores rise.

And a 10% increase in driver scores, I believe is a 40% decrease in fleet risk. That's how powerful that was. Right? So the coup de gras was the camera 

Max Clark: okay.

Chris Johnson: and that changed the game max. That was a completely different add-on technology. And that one two combo was the reason why I believe this particular client wanted to move forward with AGA and realize those benefits. 

Max Clark: There's a lot of benefit that comes immediately to the company when you start talking about monitoring. There's a lot of different technologies that go out that help, you know. You know, what's going on on the computer, how do you, um, device management, you know, um, all, all these different things. at the same time, when you start deploying this, you get a certain amount of pushback.

You know, there's always a person that's gonna be distrustful of it, of, oh, you've put a camera. I mean, now you know, you talk about camera, right? Like, oh, I'm driving a truck and there's a camera in it. You're spying on me, right? So. [00:12:00] You know, I, I immediately go to these like experiences I've had rolling out different pieces of technology with our clients and having this kind of internal resistance and pushback and how, you know, in this case, you know, it's a corporate fleet.

As part of the employment, you're driving a corporate fleet, right? So there's like a little bit of, you know, this just comes with the job that shows up already, but going from, Hey, we've got a GPS tracker to now we're putting, you know, a camera that's watching you full-time is a pretty big shift. How do you roll that out without creating, you know, impact your culture and, you know, morale issues and, and all this, all this other stuff.

Chris Johnson: Yeah. Um, that right there is the biggest objection that, uh, companies who are positioning video telematics platform need to overcome, right? Um, most of the time the fleet owner doesn't want to be that owner. So they feel that bringing in what is [00:13:00] considered, if not properly positioned, the spy cam. Big Brother.

I've heard it. All right. Video telematics. It's funny, um, I recall 15 years ago when I first got into the industry, uh, I was working with the municipality in Long Island, New York, and it was the first time a government organization in New York was, uh, putting on GPS. That I remember how much pushback the unions gave and how what that fight was because it was a privacy infringement.

15 years later, max a GPS tracker in a vehicle is complete and total table stakes. And a technician driving a vehicle or a truck driver doesn't even think twice about it, 

Max Clark: Mm-hmm. 

Chris Johnson: right? But now put it in the world of video where you have a road facing video, which for the most part is accepted. 'cause that's an exoneration to a driver.

But when you're positioning the interior view because you want to be able to measure distracted driving and help eliminate it, that is [00:14:00] when we get and see the most pushback, as you can probably well imagine, including my own family and myself as well as a commercial fleet drivers. And honestly, I put myself in their shoes and I don't blame them.

However, what we found was E to, and this is the advice I give all of. My clients personally is be very honest. Be very upfront. Do not just install this technology and go, surprise, we have a camera in the vehicle. Now make the drivers or the technicians part of the journey, part of the conversation. Get their feedback first, but more importantly, share with them why are you doing this?

And it's not because you don't trust your drivers and you're trying to spy on them. It's because literally commercial automotive insurance has increased in price nine of the past 10 years. That industry has not made money [00:15:00] in nine of the past 10 years. And the reason why is because there's more trucks on the road and more people are driving distracted, right?

So what does an insurance company do? No matter what? Even if you were a great fleet with zero claims, they raise you anyway. Because they have to, 

Max Clark: Mm-hmm.

Chris Johnson: to be sustainable. So this, that Max is what I found to be the most effective means to employ this technology is really be honest with the driver about why you're doing this.

Because in the end, you need to keep this company sustainable. But more importantly, you wanna do everything in your power to give that driver the ability to get back home safe to their family that day after work. And this is the technologies that help do that. 

Max Clark: I am thinking through like or objections. As, as you're talking and, of course the, this like idea of like, oh, you're, you're putting this into a spy on us and like monitor us and track us and all these different things. You know, GPS table stakes, right? But, [00:16:00] um, the other one that I ki I've, I've, I wonder about is, you know, if, if something happens and there is an accident, Having video and having, you know, telematics and GPS tracking and, and, and speed and acceleration and braking, all these sorts of things. You know, can be great to prove it wasn't your fault, but you've also got the potential for the inverse, and how do you deal with that? Right? Because now you're, you're also deploying, you're, you're, you're, you're deploying technology that can exonerate you or incriminate you, you know, in that incident.

Chris Johnson: Yeah. Yeah. And again, you bring up another amazing point is, uh, you just have a technology that can be subpoenaed 

Max Clark: Mm-hmm.

Chris Johnson: you could be basically incriminating yourself on.

an accident that potentially your driver caused because they were being inattentive at that moment, or violated some sort of a traffic law of some sort.

[00:17:00] And to me, it's like taking a medicine to cure some sort of an uh, issue or disease and making sure that the positives. Vastly outweigh the negatives. Uh, so the answer to your question is yes, you are exposing yourself to potential risk. Uh, but this is What, I tell our customers, and this is what, I've seen in real life.

Your insurance company would much rather much rather settle that claim with as soon as they figure out that, that it's your fault.

Max Clark: Okay,

Chris Johnson: just want to get that off the books because if you said it wasn't, and it goes into litigation and it gets, uh, extended out years, it, in the end it gets nuclear verdict versus what they could have settled it for years ago at a fraction of the cost.

You know, in the end, [00:18:00] that will positively affect a company's loss runs because all that is is how much premium you paid. How much claims your insurance company paid. If you put in more premium than you got back, you are a positive risk. And even a claim like that can positively affect your loss runs.

Right. And that's the way that we look at it.

Max Clark: what you're talking about is certainty, right? You know, even, even if, uh, the outcome is potentially negative by creating. Certainty in the process, you can manage it, right, because you know exactly what you're walking into, right? You know, if you're walking into a good situation or a bad situation, whatever it is, having certainty provides, you know, a, a much, a much easier pathway to resolution.

Um. You're a technology company, right? You're not like dictating policy and procedures and, and legal, you know, for your clients. But I, you know, somebody's gonna [00:19:00] deploy a solution and they're gonna say, okay, you're gonna gamify driver performance and driver scoring, right? And you're gonna have phenomenal drivers, you know, and you're gonna have maybe drivers that need coaching.

How, um, how do you counsel your fleet customers? I mean, or do you even counsel your fleet customers in terms of what they're looking for in terms of standards? You know, like, uh, you know, your driver rating should be above this number, and if it's below this number consistently, you know, maybe that person shouldn't be driving a vehicle the road, like, you know, how do, how do people end up using, using this to make those kind of determinations across their employees?

Chris Johnson: Yeah, I mean, listen, we can provide, uh, guidance, like, to your point, uh, although we create solutions that are used to allow fleets to be compliant. That's something like the ELD or the hours of service. 'cause a truck driver is really not allowed to drive more than 11 hours in a 14 hour workday. And they have to be mandated to take a break within their first [00:20:00] eight hours of driving.

And how do you do that? Used to be paper logs. Now it's technology. Uh, and we're a part of helping fleets be compliant with government mandates. But when it comes to the data that we're capturing, you know, we're capturing a data, uh, this data and we're turning it into a driver score. And that's honestly subjective, uh, based on what our beliefs are, based on your speeding, your braking, your acceleration, your idling, and things of that nature.

Uh, so when we're capturing the data and we get a modicum of information about how a vehicles being driven from a maintenance perspective or uh, or utilization perspective or. Being able to give insights around driver safety. All we could provide is the scoring mechanisms. However, one of the ways to differentiate is to, you gotta remember, we think we are the coolest [00:21:00] technology ever.

And you sell software as a service and you give them a login and a password, and you think they're gonna live and breathe inside of your solution. No, they're gonna run their business. So what can you do to deliver some of these data that you're capturing on a silver platter and make it, like I said it, forget it, kind of thing.

Well, one of the ways that could be accomplished is, uh, with a quarterly business report to take the data and to visualize it for a business owner or a fleet safety manager, or somebody with a vested interest in the management and the safety of the fleet, and we provide, we do our best to at least provide stacked ranked insights and let them make their own determinations.

Right. So that's a great way to cut through the noise of managing a business and be able to deliver actionable data insights on a silver platter, uh, at least minimally stack rank it, and then allow them to make their own decisions for their own policies and their own company's sustainability. 

Max Clark: I mean, you're not doing this in like in the dark. The [00:22:00] drivers are getting access to this data as well, so they can see what's going on and understand where they line up and what's happening and what other people are seeing. Like this isn't, you just called in, you know, you're getting called into a meeting in the morning, right.

And say, oh, Johnny, you know, you had a really bad day yesterday on the road. We need to talk about it. I mean, you know, there's a little bit of, of, of prompting or preemption, right? You 

Chris Johnson: Yeah. 

Max Clark: being able to make changes on their own.

Chris Johnson: Well, yeah, I mean, and the funny thing is not every telematics platform employs that, and, but that is something that I. Tell any customer I'm talking to to do, it's the same concept and it actually kind of happened with the passenger and consumer insurance. We have our insurance companies like Geico, state Farm, and Progressive, and they want you to download an app, 

Max Clark: Mm-hmm.

Chris Johnson: Right. And that app on your phone is basically using the phone's accelerometer to see if you are speeding or hard [00:23:00] braking or using your phone while you're driving. And it gives you your score so you have the ability to at least know what you need to improve. Because in that particular case, if you improve your score, you're hoping that your insurance premiums come down Right.

Now, take that to commercial fleets and. Customers have the ability to do the same, to download an app to their driver's phones that will give them their driver score, give them the reasons why they're scored like that, to give 'em the ability to make a change. Maybe it's too many hard brakes because they realizing they're distracted while they're driving.

Obviously they're, they might have the insights that they're speeding too much, and we can help provide those insights. But the coolest part of it is when you're stack ranked and you could see your score versus the other drivers, you're gonna be more motivated with that gamification to wanna improve that driver score.

Because you, you do not wanna go back to the office because everyone's got your driver score. And be that person and be like, oh, look at [00:24:00] you, Johnny or Sally. Look at your driver score. You know, what are you doing to us? You're dragging us all down. You know, it gets fun, but honestly, it's real. It's true. And, and, and a lot of our, our customers that I personally work with, they'll put an incentive in place.

That the highest driver score that week will get a gift card. And there are certain telematics platforms out there that have already that technology built in. So not only can you see the driver score and you can share that score with the driver and you can gamify it, you could send them an electronic gift card to one of their favorite big box retailers and there's their incentive to drive safer 'cause they know they're gonna win something at the end of the day.

Heck, we have a customer at the end of the year for the driver with the top driver score wins a Ford F-150. Yeah. Yeah.

Max Clark: motivating. 

Chris Johnson: That's motivating. And as you can imagine, they [00:25:00] have the highest driver scores I've ever seen in a large enterprise organization. So 

Max Clark: so 

Chris Johnson: yeah. 

Max Clark: let's, let's, that's a, I, okay. I wanna, I wanna, let's, let's dig into this a little bit here. That company has obviously figured out that the cost of giving somebody a vehicle right now, I mean, I don't purchased, leased. I don't care what, right. There is a financial cost that they have. They figured out, you know, and $40,000, 50 thou, whatever it is, right?

That the value to them not worth the, it's not an equivalent thing. Right? It's probably worth like multiples higher than whatever the prize is worth. In this case, 

Chris Johnson: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I

mean, to your point, if you wanna quantify that, say they souped this Ford F-150 up and this thing was to make $80,000. Right? They probably had an ROI where they saved at least 15 to 20% on their commercial automotive insurance. So if you have 500 vehicles [00:26:00] and your average commercial automotive is $3,000 and then you save 20% of that, right.

Plus the operational efficiencies that you gained, plus the other jobs that you could have done 'cause you employ the technology. Plus all the other benefits in bells of whistles associated with fuel savings. Uh, to your point, that was probably a fraction of the ROI and they were very happy to award that level of prize to the safest driver in the fleet. I 

Max Clark: I mean, that's, that's pretty awesome. What, um, what does rollout of this look like? I mean, how much downtime do you have per vehicle? What actually gets installed? You know, um, I. They see, they see something in the ca you know, in the, in the, in the, in the, oh, my, my, on the windscreen. Right. So you have the cameras facing forward and backwards.

Right. But like what other stuff can you collect of the vehicle at this point in and be able to report back in terms of [00:27:00] just traditional fleet management iot.

Chris Johnson: Yeah. Yeah. So what we've seen in the industry is a lot of this technology is now self installable, uh, which has definitely increased. Its, uh, I guess penetration. 'cause a lot of times when you wanna install something like this, you not only had to incur a monthly recurring cost for the software, but then you had a, a capital expenditure of buying the hardware and then having to pay an installer to install the technology.

Now, uh, we just power everything off of the OBD two port or the engine diagnostics port under the steering column, and. Even the camera that gets installed with some sticky tape up on the windscreen can also be self installed. So, uh, so easy to deploy. And in our industry, in software as a service and the iot.

what's become expected is an operational expense business model.

Meaning that the vast majority of fleets who are adopting this technology do not have to pay anything out of pocket because that hardware is included in the [00:28:00] service and it's amortized over the course of the term. So now you're eliminating barriers of entry, right? To go from a CapEx to an opex perspective and make it easy.

And then now couple that with, to your point, some of the additional data points that are being captured. You know, immediately when you plug in a device like this, you're mobilizing the engine computer and you're getting year, make, model odometer, diagnostic trouble codes, and that all comes in in real time, uh, being a Bridgestone company.

Personally, one of the biggest and most exciting, um, adventures that I've been on late have been around our ability to create tire pressure monitoring alerts because Max, I never realized how much attire pressure can affect not only the vehicle's performance, but also safety. Right? An underinflated tire, as we all know, everyone always [00:29:00] says, keep airing your tires because it's better for your fuel economy.

Like, okay, that's easy. Is that enough for me to wanna save 1% of my fuel? Admittedly No.

Right? So before I worked for a company owned by the largest tire company in the world, I just ignored the TPMS light the moment I started working for a company who cared to, uh, provide that data. And then we figure out that.

An underinflated tire when you're trying to stop short to avoid an accident, has a higher propensity to fail. And that accident might occur because someone wasn't monitoring tire pressure. One of the easiest things to maintain a vehicle with. Right. So that to me was enlightening about the additional telemetry that's being captured in today's telematics platforms.

Uh, and then as we've been discussing the advent of AI and being used in that video telematics device, that [00:30:00] I can't even think about picking up my phone to answer a text or an email because I know that ai, it's watching and I don't want that video recorded of me. 'cause I do demos of this platform every day and sometimes I'm doing it of me.

That's weird. Right. Slightly cathartic and, and and slightly humorous, but also real is that even me, someone who advocates for this technology can sometimes have a moment of weakness and check their phone while they're driving. Right. And thankfully there's something there keeping me accountable. Right.

And that's been the really cool aspect of some of the additional telemetry data points that have evolved in the video telematics and the fleet telematics industry. 

Max Clark: So, so a PG already had a fleet tracking solution. They had GPS trackers. They had, you know, in theory, you know, probably an ODB connection, all these things because that was like GPS [00:31:00] and, and the OBD engine diagnostics were like the first wave of real iot into, into transportation and fleet management.

They install, they switch. Um, I, you know, okay, so they, they, they realize it's not cutting it for them anymore and they've got these other issues that they wanna deal with, right? So insurance costs, accidents, safety issues, you know, these other things that are going on, right? So that's causing pain and it's causing enough pain.

They say, okay, let's go. And is there, what's the fix to this? Like, how do we actually fix this? Um, they install your equipment, they get cameras. You know, um, they get cameras in their fleet, they start tracking driver performance drivers start seeing their own scores. They start doing, you know, stack raking reports and people can gamify and, and not be the, you know, forget management, right?

Peer pressure. You don't wanna be on the bottom of the pile, right? Like, just period. Um, what's the, what's the impact of that for them, you know, three months, six months, 12 months later, [00:32:00] this rolls out and actually goes, goes. You know, mainstream within their fleet.

Chris Johnson: Yeah, the biggest, the biggest thing for me was when you ask a client, you know, when you're trying to do an ROI or a case study of, you know, what was the impact that we made, we knew we were gonna make an impact on, you know, fuel savings. 'cause we can measure engine idling and operational efficiency like that, that table stake stuff was, uh, expected. 

Max Clark: Mm-hmm.

Chris Johnson: But when they mentioned that they had, um, an insurance savings of like 15%. You know. that because They just basically said, you know.

that to be true. And we knew that occurred because, I mean, think about it. Why would your insurance costs go lower in a world where they're doing everything in their power to raise you because you have become one of the safest [00:33:00] fleets and you're a fleet that an insurance company wants because that, that's pure profit.

Like they're just collecting premium from you and they're minimally paying out on claims. And the reason why, besides obviously their own ability to, uh, roll out their own safety culture right, was the technology that was employed to support that. Because, you know, if your insur insurance savings went down, two things happen.

One. The insurance company immediately deemed you a safer fleet than a fleet of your peers because you just have this technology and they have their own actuarial tables, right? Who could figure that out.

Max Clark: They

Chris Johnson: And they say if you have GPS, if you have camera, if you are this vertical with this many vehicles, versus someone with the exact same vertical and vertical and and number of vehicles, but doesn't have camera [00:34:00] connected camera, not just like a one you can buy in Best Buy, but I'm talking about like the one that coaches the driver, you're gonna get a savings and then because you're now having less accidents, your premium is gonna have the ability to get lower because you are a risk that you could shop yourself around now and find lower insurance premiums.

That, to me, was eyeopening and showed the real true power of this technology and action as a physical ROI. Probably that savings alone just pays for the solution itself on a monthly basis. 

Max Clark: math that you gave me earlier. 130 vehicles, $3,000 a vehicle. 15%. It's 60. It's almost $60,000 a year in savings, right? Just on insurance premium. But that's, that's the surface, right? Because you know, accidents mean deductibles for insurance coverage, right? Accidents mean.

right? So now you have, um, [00:35:00] you know, is it, is it, uh, is your team injured? Can they work? Can they not work? Do you have now staffing issues, right? And capacity? Um, how long does it take to get a vehicle repaired? How long is a vehicle outta service? What's the impact on revenue of not having vehicles actually out in the world, right?

Like, there's a lot of, there's a lot of second order effects that come out of this that aren't just like, oh, we saved $60,000 a year on insurance. number is actually probably staggeringly much higher. You know, when you, when you start tacking these other things onto it as well, right?

Chris Johnson: Yeah.

and, and you're getting deep. And that is all true and that's legit. And half of those savings were for the fleet. The other part that you were mentioning was actually for the insurance company, right? How much money that they saved by insuring a fleet who had this technology. So they don't have to have the 300, 400, 5,000 thousand dollars $1 million claim, right?

And then they're only gonna probably cover you up to a [00:36:00] million. And then if you're a business who has an umbrella policy, it flows on into that, right? So that cascading effect of. The, I guess there's a huge economy around things getting broken, unfortunately. Right? I think about it, you know, once a car crashes, you got, you know, the tow truck coming in, getting yourself to the maintenance shop, getting yourself auto repaired, right?

And then all the actuarials that the insurance company, you're busy, busy, busy, busy, like, you know, and the underwriters and the, and the claims guys. But you claim, and then you as a business, now you gotta go in and pay your people to go replace that vehicle and get those jobs done. 'cause now you have a vehicle outta service.

You're right. There is a huge ca effect and it's hard for me to quantify that without getting a little too crazy to a customer. And the impact that these technologies have 

Max Clark: Yeah.

Chris Johnson: the te I guess the vertical at large, the fleet vertical. But it's, it's astounding when you really look at it through your lens. 

Max Clark: Some of this is pretty basic, right? You know, if [00:37:00] you dispatch a truck, whether it's for, you know, a work order for, you know, you're doing a service, right? You're going out and you're doing work, or you're doing a delivery. that truck is off the road, you have to then get somebody else to go out and either go to that truck and, and take all the inventory off of it and switch it, and then go and complete the delivery.

you know, you have to dispatch another crew to then go out and do the work that was originally done. And then you have this like cascading, like, you know, stuff, right? And. Um, a lot of times we refer to it in terms of like, how much slack do you have to have in your, you know, how much elasticity and slack do you have in your operations in order to deal with these events?

Do you have capacity to then deal with all these, you know, and, and it becomes, becomes a math problem, right? You know, a hundred trucks on the road, X percent are gonna have an issue each day. And then how much capacity and how much, how, how many jobs can you take in a given day and how, you know, like, and so anything that you can do to increase your, um.

You know, to increase the utilization makes, makes [00:38:00] differences in terms of your financials of your business like this. I'm not, you know, this isn't like, I'm not inventing anything new here. This isn't, but just, but it's just the way this works. 

Chris Johnson: yeah.

absolutely. I mean, in the end, with a business, especially field services, stuff happens, Right, And a lot of it unfortunately is gonna be out of your control, right.

Um, many wise men who give these business like books for You to read always, say it. Just focus on the things you can control and, and, and driver safety and driver behavior, mo modification and enforcing driver policies.

And to your point, having a little bit of slack. You know, you probably, as much as you wanna be operationally efficient, want to have a spare vehicle

Max Clark: Right,

Chris Johnson: and you want to have a driver on call because stuff happens like, you know what I mean? But it, 

Max Clark: We 

Chris Johnson: yeah. But if you can minimize it, right, versus the stuff [00:39:00] that's happening to your competition and you're making that additional revenue and that additional income and you're more reliable and getting more business as a result of that.

better reliability because of technologies like a fleet management system, right?

That's what you could control. That's what you can have a positive effect with, and that's How you can be differentiated. That's the way I look at it.

Max Clark: How quickly does driver behavior change?

Chris Johnson: Yeah. Um, in my experience, you immediately install this technology and it's like magic. It's magical. Like suddenly everyone stops texting and, and everyone's not speeding anymore. And the hard braking, you know, baseline, if you had a baseline, it's slow. Okay? But then something interesting happens, max, about three months later, people start snapping into their old habits again, even though they had the technology installed.

Wait, [00:40:00] how could you, how could you have distracted driving increase? But you got the camera right.

there, Right, How can all these hard brakes still occur? Or why is this vehicle not being properly maintained? No one's telling me the check engine lights on. Because what we find, and this is the biggest part, is once that honeymoon period is over, you gotta take this technology and the data that you're capturing and really make it part of your operational cadence on a daily basis.

Okay? Because it's a set it and forget it technology, and it's up to the management. It's up to leaders to make sure that the data is not only being captured, but also being utilized to make business decisions.

Max Clark: All

Chris Johnson: So if I give you the best, most amazing GPS tracking solution ever that could eliminate the frequency and costs, whatever action claims on none of that, and no one's watching it, and no one's doing [00:41:00] anything about it, 

Max Clark: Right.

Chris Johnson: then no one's gonna care.

And that happens a lot. And it's no one's fault. No one's doing that on purpose. You didn't just invest this three year agreement with the software as a service company to capture this data and not use it. It's the nature of the beast and there, that's why what I try to do is by assigning a customer a success manager.

And having the success manager knock on the door once in a while and, Hey, remember this, did you know that your fuel efficiency is here and your, tire pressure is there and these drivers are doing that? Oh, yeah.

And then they can get that back into the behavior and the visibility, and then you'll have a better baseline to use this data to be more efficient and safer.

That's the, the way I could positively affect that versus what you see when this data gets in, um, captured from the installation of a solution like this. 

Max Clark: Something that's running a smaller fleet. You know, if you've got a thousand [00:42:00] cars. A thousand trucks, 500 trucks, a hundred trucks, you're probably already there saying, okay, we need to have real fleet management. You know, if you're a business, you've got 10 trucks, five trucks, three trucks, like, you know, and, and somebody's listening to this and watching that and saying, ah, you know, I've only got four trucks.

I'm too small for this. I don't need this. What would you say to them?

Chris Johnson: Yeah.

I guess I would equate it to when I had my third kid. Me and my wife went from man to man coverage to his zone defense, right? Uh, same thing with a commercial fleet. Like once you grow to the point where it's not your brother-in-law driving the vehicle, and you're hiring people who are skilled technicians or skilled delivery people, and you didn't hire them to be drivers, they're not professional drivers, but they have a driver's license, okay?

And they're driving a vehicle, it's not theirs, 

Max Clark: Yeah. 

Chris Johnson: So when you factor that in and one's trying to do any kind of malfeasance like that, that's just [00:43:00] just human nature, you know? It's like when you get into a rental car, if for some reason you just feel free to just hit the gas really hard and hit the brake, and who cares about the transmission?

It's a rental. You know what I'm saying? So my advice to a small business owner is you, you first want to set the precedent and the same way you're building credit. You also wanna build your safety credit and there's nothing better now because that's gonna follow you around for five years. Any little accident that you get into right, will follow you around on the Lexis Nexus data capture, the same way they capture your credit score.

There's multiple platforms out there that measure you as a business, and safety is one of them, right? So, uh, for a very minimal investment, you could ensure the best possibility of operational efficiency and safety and accident mitigation, right? By paying an [00:44:00] extra couple of bucks per vehicle per month.

And, you know, the, the benefits exponentially scale from there. Um, and to your point where the average fleet size of Azuga personally is approximately like 30 vehicles. Of the 14,000 customers and 500,000 connected devices, average fleet size being 30 or so. Uh, but the higher the vehicle count, obviously the more heavier you're penetrated you're gonna have with telematics.

Max Clark: Right.

Chris Johnson: Right? So coming down to the SMB, right, that is, uh, a lot of plat, you know that that's where the money is, that's where the bread and butter is. That is the most opportunity right now because to your point, businesses who own and operate commercial fleets and they're less than 10 vehicles, don't think that they need this. Right.

Um, but our contention for sure is that there are too many [00:45:00] benefits to ignore beyond the privacy infringement component of it. And our job is to deliver that return on investment and prepare them for being sustainable in the future. 

Max Clark: How, um, how has fleet management evolved and there, there was, I mean, look at, you look at companies that are running fleets, right? And this is the, you know, traditionally like blue collar work. You'd classify delivery drivers, again, service technicians, these sorts of things, right? But now we're talking about like really sophisticated technology being deployed into these companies and how does that change, you know?

And then again, we, we, we've talked a lot about, things around, you know, efficiency, you know, what cos care about or we talk about risk mitigation, what General counsel cares about, you know, or, or a CFO in terms of premium reduction or total cost exposure reduction, right? Like these, know. That becomes atypical in terms of what you're, you know, a traditional fleet manager or fleet safety officer's role is within a company.[00:46:00] 

And now you have information that's feeding or decisions that are feeding into, you know, other people within that organization and, and other executive tiers. Right. 

Chris Johnson: Yeah. 

Max Clark: how has this changed and evolved?

Chris Johnson: Yeah.

And information overload for sure.

Max Clark: Yeah.

Chris Johnson: As you could imagine. Uh, the pressure for us to get out of the UI and just have a dashboard with some dots on it and now have to visualize this data at the CFO or CEO level from a KPI perspective. So now having to look at the consumption of this data from both ends of the spectrum, both executive as well as operational, like that to me has been an evolution of the way that this data needs to be presented, um, to help, because of the, the impact that it has on so many different business units.

Right. And the fact that we want to be able to expose it. 'cause to your point, back in the day, this would just be, they would sign up for a solution like this and just a fleet manager just used it and they had a [00:47:00] web web portal and they used it for job dispatching and they had all this data and they didn't do anything with it.

Right. And from a technological evolution. It's funny, uh, I could talk to a fleet right now and it would be a bunch of 2023 Ford F1 fifties or something like that, and I don't have to send them any hardware because the vast majority of commercial vehicles, um, made within the last couple of years already have telematics embedded in the vehicle, 

Max Clark: Oh, cool.

Chris Johnson: right?

So, uh, they already have this technology installed and you could capture location, you can capture speed, you could capture driver behavior, hard braking, sudden acceleration, Um,

idling, all that stuff. So just from a base like location and driver behavior perspective, this data's already being captured by platforms like OnStar, [00:48:00] right?

So what. We're seeing now is the ability to tap into that data because the OEMs will sell a platform provider of this technology, like our company, the data. So I could go to a customer now and look at their fleet and ask them for their yearly make and models and VINs. And then these vehicles, they're a little older.

We're gonna have to install some hardware to get the magic to happen. These vehicles just give us the vin, press this button, boom, aggregate all that data into one singular data stream, provide that on the portal. And then that's how we're dealing with this evolution in this fleet technology to make this data almost ubiquitous.

Like it's very hard not to be able to tap into the telematics data that could truly make an impact on a customer's fleet operations. Um, so those are two evolution points that I've seen so far.

Max Clark: Um, [00:49:00] you, you know, I, I love these conversations. I love this. I mean, because you, you see like technology, right? But really technology is this like final step in the chain, right? And before it, there's always people in process and like, what are you actually trying to do and get to that? Then you can enable and, and, and glean from technology and you've, you know, you've made the point a few times here, which is like, okay, we're gonna give you all this data, but you have to do something with it, right?

Like. like use the data to make your business better, but now you have the data so you can make decisions with it and, um, or like, hey, you've got a vehicle on the road with, with low tire pressure or check engine light, or, you know, the engine's about to blow up, you know, do something about it before it costs you a lot of money.

Right. Like, you know, again, it's, it's like enablement. You're enabling people to actually do stuff, but they still have to look at it in order to make a decision or, or do something with it. Um, the. I [00:50:00] think, you know, most, most, let's just, I'll, I'll, I'll phrase, I'll rephrase it. A lot of people have been in a rideshare vehicle, which has a camera in it.

Right. You know, I mean, is this normalizing at this point? You know, I mean, it used to be really weird to sit in a car that had a camera watching you, but you know, for me at least, it's kinda like, oh yeah, of course there's a camera in this car. You know, like, don't do anything weird.

Chris Johnson: I think it is normalizing. Yeah.

To your point, the ride share cameras, that's just a dash cam that's recording on an SD card and it's there for the driver's protection, uh, in case someone, uh, passenger does anything, uh, stupid or if that driver gets into an accident and hopefully that accident was, uh, something that they could get, uh, exonerated by, like that's the dash cam.

And to your point, you don't think twice anymore, like 10 years ago when I started getting into yellow cabs and that technology was being implemented because of unfortunately, the crime in New York City. It was like, wow, I guess I can't rob this cab driver. Not that [00:51:00] I was going to, you know what I mean?

But it was like, you know, it was kinda shocking that someone's watching me right now. But when you look at the evolution of video in general, max ring doorbell, like basically you can't even go up to someone's house to know that you're getting fully recorded. I got rings all around my house, 

Max Clark: Yeah.

Chris Johnson: I mean?

Uh, you go, you go, uh, to the corner and there's video cameras everywhere on every streetlight in my neighborhood here in Monroe Township, New Jersey. Now I don't know what they're doing with it, right? But they got the video of me, right? Um, and then you walk into a, uh, any business and there the security cameras on right there. So why not, why not have the video of the vehicle too, and OEMs like Tesla, like that's one of the first vehicles that put an OEM camera. That faces interior view. Now they use it for driver attentiveness for the self-driving [00:52:00] solution. But you press a button that just turns the video on and you can see what's going on inside. my feeling Max is in the next couple of years, exterior and interior cameras are gonna be just as an OEM inclusion as much as GPSs in all consumer and commercial vehicles today. Right? And then it's just how do you use that data and what other cool AI data is gonna be out there, uh, to help protect us, uh, while we're out there on the road.

And don't even get me started with AI and self-driving vehicles and the technology that's supporting that and how that whole world is going to be a safer robot driving world, right? Uh, really innovative and exciting times in the world of fleet telematics, and I'm glad to be a part of it.

Max Clark: So my camera's frozen, but it's okay 'cause I'm gonna get one more sound bite outta you. And we can, we can finish here. Um, so Chris, like final, final, final word here. [00:53:00] What's one thing that you wish more people with fleets understood about I OT telematics, GPS cameras, things that are.

Chris Johnson: No worries.

One thing I wish every fleet knew about Fleet iot, that it is truly not just about the tracking, it's about transforming operations in real time. The data, it's already there, [00:54:00] like the power is in using it to proactively prevent downtime to coach your drivers, to reduce that risk and to make decisions that ultimately gonna grow your business, not just monitor it, right?

Uh, this is not a. Fully privacy infringing technology. This is one of the most powerful and amazing solutions out there to maximize efficiency while making sure that your drivers of your vehicles are getting home safe to their families that night. That powerful ones who combo is the reason why you employ a GPS solution with video telematics.

Right? It's not a gotcha, it's Hey, driver of mine. Great job.

Thank you, max. I apologize. I know you are a very diligent man and to come in cold without having the case study, um, uh, obviously you're a man who could think on his [00:55:00] feet and, uh, I think we did something pretty cool together today. So I appreciate you sticking with me and, uh, next time we do this, I'll make sure you're a little bit more [00:56:00] prepared. 

Max Clark-1: [00:57:00] Okay, it's recording again. I'll just, I'll just prompt that again. Let's pull that some Chrome update has now caused all sorts of gr, you know, grief for myself. Um, okay. First final word. Um, what is one thing that you wish more people knew about IOT and telematics or managing fleets, you know.[00:58:00] 

Awesome, Chris. Thank you very much. This is fantastic.

​[00:59:00] 

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