Background

First Mile (www.thefirstmile.co.uk) is a fast growing start-up business within the
recycling and waste industry, servicing thousands of city centre businesses that
have no recycling service, high costs of waste collection or poor service from
local authorities. Founded in 2004, it now operates 25 vehicles that collect waste
from over 5,000 collection points throughout London and Birmingham. As the
company has grown so too has the complexity of managing their mobile assets.

The rapid growth in the number of collections and deliveries, increased duty of
care obligations, and limited vehicle tracking meant that First Mile was underutilising
its fl eet and had a limited ability to provide customer feed-back on delivery and collections progress.

The Solution

First Mile set out to fi nd a suitable solution in order to improve vehicle management and driver utilisation. After considering several fleet management and tracking providers the company chose to install ROAD ANGEL Fleet tracking boxes to all 25 of their vehicles, a decision made primarily based on value for money and the ease of de-installing and re-installing the tracking boxes to different vehicles.

For less than £15 per month per vehicle over three years, the Road Angel system delivers:

• Easy installation of tracking units
• A comprehensive and easy to use online tracking portal enabling First Mile’s entire fl eet to be monitored and tracked on a Microsoft
• Virtual Earth map – with locations of vehicles updated every 60 seconds
• The ability to search for vehicles geographically by postcode
• The automated capture of mileage and journey data including journeyspeeds, idle time, over-speed, ignition on/off and vehicle location
• Powerful reporting including journey summaries, vehicle andfl eet day summaries, out-of-hours usage, servicing intervals, over-speed and idle times
• The ability to identify where their vehicles have been as theyrelate to pre-determined Points of Interest (POI’s), which First Mile set to waste and recycling depots
• The ability to track stolen vehicles

The Benefits

Since installing the ROAD ANGEL Fleet system on their entire fl eet, First Mile has already successfully recovered a stolen vehicle and seen a marked increase in productivity. Bruce Bratley, Chief Executive Offi cer of First Mile, commented:

"With automated data capture and bespoke reporting, First Mile has streamlined the administration of their fl eet in areas such as expense claiming, vehicle servicing and monitoring of vehicle movements".

The system also aids in the duty of care requirements First Mile has towards their employees, by monitoring driver behaviour such as speeding and unauthorised use of vehicles.