Protecting peak season profits

On Black Friday and throughout the holiday season, shifting traffic patterns and increased congestion put additional pressure on fleet operations. The heightened demands of peak season can significantly impact route optimisation and driver compliance, and increase the risk of delays, requiring agile planning and real-time adjustments to maintain efficiency.

Drivers can’t rely on intuition or established routines during peak season. Last year, toll road traffic volumes peaked at 853,564 on 20 December – a clear indication of the highway traffic congestion issues fleets face when trying to keep their scheduling commitments.

In coastal cities like Cape Town and Durban, on-demand ride-hailing services for tourists and minibus taxis can create additional traffic gridlocks during peak season as fleets navigate between ports and distribution centres.

The risk for transport operators and their subcontractors increases as drivers explore risky alternative routes to avoid peak season traffic issues. Venturing off proven routes exposes fleets to high-risk theft areas and poorly maintained roads that increase vehicle wear, tyre blowout risk, accidents, and downtime delays. 

GoMetro’s integrated telematics and fleet management platform, Bridge, enhances real-time oversight and control during peak season. With Bridge, valuable fleet telematics are consolidated, integrated, and actionable – all on one screen.

The platform has invaluable features for fleet managers during the pressure-filled peak season period, with data insights, complete overwatch, and real-time alerts. The Bridge Geofence tool allows operators to create virtual alert boundaries where they matter. For better ETA awareness, a collection or delivery area can be geofenced to send alert notifications when the fleet moves between collection and delivery points.

When hazardous weather, fleet-targeted crime, or traffic events risk overwhelming routing, fleet operators can respond by zoning a geofence around a risk area, to stay abreast of precisely when vehicles are going where they shouldn’t. The Polygon feature allows customised geofences to align with real-world boundaries: fences, walls, unidirectional entrances/exits, or temporary barriers and roadworks. Incredibly accurate geofence alert zones can thus be drawn corresponding to real-world construction or loading site complexities. 

Extended dwell times create a lot of scheduling pressure and can increase crash risk during peak season. Research suggests that vehicles suffering 15 minutes of unplanned dwell time can increase their crash risk by 6.2% due to speeding or reckless driving in an attempt to make up lost time.

These dwell time risks can be reduced by deploying Bridge Geofence’s triggerable Dwell Alerts to create vehicle loitering limits in zones that matter, to prevent vehicles from idling away fuel or falling behind schedule during loading and unloading. 

Bridge’s Replay feature, meanwhile, is a visual journey data tool that tracks any route deviation or reckless driving. It lowers the risk of route deviations, unauthorised passengers, and driver compliance issues – all operational hazards that escalate during peak season.

A fleet’s journey history can reveal valuable insights that help analyse past journeys and plan better ones – especially during the surge in traffic density and driving risk during peak season. Bridge Replay enables this, while its interactive mapping and customisable timeframe data can also resolve journey disputes with drivers or subcontractors by providing detailed vehicle movement data.

There’s no avoiding peak season or hoping it might be milder than in previous years. Bridge is the fleet management platform that secures profitability during peak season, with real-time oversight, alerts, and virtual fleet tools, all of which are viewable and actionable on a single screen.