Stott & Sons Ltd (Stotts Coaches) is one of West Yorkshire’s leading coach operators. A family-run company with more than 25 years experience in the bus and coach industry, today it operates a fleet of more than 30 vehicles and has built up a reputation for reliability and professionalism. 

Supplying local bus services in and around the Huddersfield area, Stotts also operates coaches throughout the UK on private hire, contracts, express services and coach holidays.
Utilising its coach fleet, Stotts operates a number of express services for a large UK coach operator.

However in the past Stotts had difficulty in providing evidence that drivers delivered to their service level agreements. 
Additionally, the culture within Stotts was one where the drivers would leave engines running for long periods of time while idle, wasting fuel.

Driven also by a desire to eliminate phone calls made to drivers while mobile combined with a desire to calculate carbon usage for public sector contracts, Stotts looked for a better way to monitor the use of its fleet.

The solution

Stotts identified the benefits a vehicle tracking system could have for them and subsequently investigated three solutions from Navman, Fleetsmart and Road Angel Fleet. After further investigation it decided to install Road Angel Fleet Live Track units to all its coach fleet. 

This was partly due to Road Angel’S ability to supply the units for outright purchase as opposed to an ongoing contract, and partly due to the Road Angel Fleet system being by far the most cost-effective. Costing only 50p per vehicle per day, the system delivers:

  • Exceptional value for money, paying for itself in as little as six months
  • Real Time tracking of the fleet on one map
  • The ability to view detailed journey and mileage data, with breadcrumb trails
  • The ability to monitor the length of time engines are unnecessarily left running
  • Powerful reporting including journey summaries, vehicle and fleet day summaries, out of hours usage, servicing intervals, over speed and idle times.

Benefits

Since installing the Live Track system across its entire coach fleet, Stotts has reduced idle times by “at least an hour per day, per vehicle”. This equates to a saving in fuel costs of over £20,000 each year!*

Stotts can also now provide evidence to its customers that drivers have delivered to their service level agreements, with the ability to view detailed journey reports. 

Carl Stott, director of Stotts, commented: “We understood there were a lot of benefits a tracking system could have for us by simply knowing where our drivers were and what they were doing. 

“Now it’s installed, I can manage my fleet a lot better with it than I could without it. It’s brilliant... everything’s at your fingertips.”

Not only has the system more than paid for itself, Stotts can be reassured it is complying with duty of care obligations and delivering an exceptional level of service to customers.

 

*Studies show that a diesel engine left running idle can consume up to one gallon of fuel per hour.