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By Greg Bartlett

The county commissioner for Knox County Tennessee, Mike Hammond, has revealed a plan to reduce the amount of money the county spends to operate its fleet of county owned vehicles. The first step involves the installation of GPS tracking devices in all county owned cars and trucks. He made the comment that the city of Nashville saw immediate savings in fuel and reduction in the number of miles city owned cars were driven the day they had GPS tracking devices installed.

It is anticipated that Knox County will see a similar drastic decrease when county employees learn that they are being watched in their county owned take home vehicles. There should be a lot fewer side trips and quick trips to the grocery store in county vehicles.

Hammond also plans to use data collected by the GPS tracking devices to eliminate all unnecessary double coverage of the same ground in county owned vehicles. He believes that he can reduce the number of cars and trucks owned by the county by at least 20% over the next couple of years by using the GPS tracking devices to manage the county fleet. These figures do not reflect any data concerning the cars owned by the county sheriff’s department.

This is a very good example of how vehicle tracking devices that utilizes GPS tracking can be used to save money. Businesses have applied the same principles to operating their vehicle fleets for many years with great success. Mileage on company owned vehicles is reduced, fuel usage is reduced and periods of idling are virtually eliminated. In addition, a fleet manager can dispatch the nearest employee to handle a service call rather than picking someone at random who may be on the other side of town.

If Mr. Hammond is able to convince the county commission to authorize the expenditure for the tracking devices he is seeking, the odds are excellent, based on past performance in other areas, that the savings that result will more than pay for the entire vehicle tracking system, including the monitoring. Saving the taxpayers’ money is one goal that the people of the county will get behind without question if offered the opportunity.

If any county employees feel that their privacy is being invaded by such a system, they always have the option of parking the county vehicle at night in the county yard and driving their own vehicle to and from work each day.