By Fleet Management Weekly Staff
November 13, 2024
Fleet safety encompasses many different factors: the safety of drivers, pedestrians, and vehicles. Working with a fleet management platform can help fleet managers curb poor driving behavior, decrease safety incidents, reduce insurance costs, and save lives.
One underreported aspect of fleet safety involves protecting vehicles from theft. With expensive onboard components and catalytic converters in high demand, vehicle theft has skyrocketed over the last couple of years. That’s an issue that’s become a top priority for IntelliShift, the fleet management platform dedicated to enhancing fleet safety and efficiency.
Erin Gilchrist
IntelliShift combines various forms of intelligent technology into one unified platform, giving fleet managers a comprehensive overview of their entire fleet. The company uses telematics, dash cams, and inspection data to help fleets minimize vehicle downtime, reduce weekly safety incidents, and lower insurance costs. They’re also working with fleet managers to overhaul safety procedures and institute new policies to mitigate vehicle theft amid a rising tide.
To learn more about IntelliShift and how fleet managers can prevent vehicle theft from happening to them, we spoke with Erin Gilchrist, VP of Fleet Evangelism at IntelliShift.
Tell me about IntelliShift. What should fleet managers know about the company?
IntelliShift is a next-generation fleet intelligent platform that’s powerful and easy to use. We take data from multiple systems–telematics, AI, dash cams, digital inspections, maintenance events, and ERP systems and more–and bring it together to make fleet management more manageable.
With our platform, fleet managers can open up their laptops, tablets, or phones and access insights that help them run their fleets better daily. They have access to reports, dashboards, and alerts on any number of things: devices that might not be reporting, drivers who might be driving erratically, and vehicles that are overdue for inspections or maintenance.
IntelliShift brings all of those day-to-day fleet management aspects to life with daily insights that help fleet managers be more predictive and proactive. We deliver a world-class customer experience that’s consultative and unique to our competition. I’m a free consultant to existing and prospective customers, helping them realize their safety and efficiency goals every day. We’re on a mission to help our customers achieve zero accidents and drive a genuine safety culture in their organizations.
A lot of vehicle theft is happening worldwide, impacting the fleet industry. What’s going on, and what can be done about it?
Since 2019, the number of vehicle thefts in our industry has consistently grown year over year. This affects productivity, costs, and drivers. Vehicle thefts in organizations have so many impacts that they have caused a fundamental shift in business continuity. The question is, why is this happening?
First off, fleets are being targeted because they have great vehicles. Popular vehicles being stolen are either sedan-based or pickups, and many fleets operate with pickups. Organized crime involvement is a factor, as are certain economic factors like the economic downturn and the rising costs of goods and services.
Unfortunately, people resort to theft to deal with some of that. Cybercrime has also increased, such as cybercriminals accessing keyless vehicle entry. I read last year, in 2023, that over a million vehicles were stolen in the US. Those are big numbers at a time when it’s difficult for fleets and organizations to replace these assets.
So, what do we do about this? First and foremost, drivers play a big part in helping with theft prevention. They can park in a well-lit area, take their vehicles home, or park in a secure location whenever possible. Organizations that bring their vehicles back to the offices or home bases at night can erect a fence around those assets and some lighting.
Then, there are tools available, like audible alarms that go off when the vehicle is in the process of being stolen. There are also brake locks and steering wheel locks that make it more challenging for asset theft. I don’t know that anything is foolproof, but these deterrents will make you less of a target than someone who does nothing. GPS is another great tool to send alerts when a vehicle is being mobilized at a time that it shouldn’t be. It also helps to find the asset if it does get stolen.
What should fleet managers think about this? What should they do to prepare for this possibility and keep it from happening?
The most important thing is for organizations to be aware of the problem. They need to know that this is happening and understand that just because it isn’t happening to them doesn’t mean it won’t happen to them in the future. It’s essential to raise awareness that vehicles could be at risk of theft.
Getting that message out to operations and warehouse leaders is especially important, essentially anyone that houses or operates fleet assets. So, I think a good communication strategy is a great place to start.
Secondly, they should make policy revisions regarding where vehicles should be parked and ensure they are always locked. They should be locked everywhere: on work sites, at a customer’s site, at a place of business. Even when the driver is on site and doing work, the vehicle should always be locked. It’s important to update those policies and have a specific policy around vehicle theft prevention. That raises awareness, sets the tone, and gets the drivers in the habit of complying with policy. All of this reduces the company’s chance of being targeted for theft.
Additionally, fleet leaders should be investing in technologies that prevent theft, including valuable tools such as GPS and on-board cameras that provide real-time alerts when a vehicle is being mobilized. Further, data from telematics and AI dash cams will help you identify and catch a thief, as well as recover the vehicle.
It’s also important to note that it’s not just about the theft of the vehicle. There are a lot of expensive onboard components that the thief may want to steal. They may not be interested in the car itself but in the tools your operator uses or the precious metals in your catalytic converter. That’s why locking systems that make vehicles more challenging to penetrate are helpful.
In the case of catalytic converter theft, parking vehicles in more secure areas can also be helpful, although that may not be an option for every fleet. So, think about what your options are, and which are the most realistic, and then implement the policies and tools that work best for you. You may not be able to do every solution on every vehicle but start with the most compromised vehicles in your fleet and go from there.
Do you have any stories from IntelliShift where people who have used your technology have been able to keep theft from happening or find a stolen vehicle quickly?
We’ve helped many customers use telematics to find stolen assets quickly before any damage occurs. We’ve also alerted our customers when their vehicles are mobilized after hours or they’ve been parked at a location or a site. In some instances, it was just a driver using the vehicle in an unauthorized way, but some involved the vehicles being removed from the site when they shouldn’t be. In those cases, recoveries happened quicker, which has led to reduced damages, cost, and downtime.
We’re always working with our customers to develop new real-time alerts to avoid this uptick in vehicle and component theft. For example, geofencing is a great way to know when a vehicle is moved outside of a pre-set zone. There are many different scenarios that can initiate alerts, so we’re always trying to narrow those down and use different ways to alert fleet managers when their vehicles are doing things they shouldn’t.
