MERCEDES-BENZ Commercial Vehicles is the only truck OEM in South Africa to offer a proprietary Fleet Management system. “The fuel consumption of entire vehicle fleets can be permanently reduced by five to ten percent when FleetBoard monitors the fleet for greater transparency,” says Pascal Weiss, Sales and Business Development Manager of FleetBoard South Africa. “The system is a telematics-based Internet service that reinforces the effects of professional driver training by sending data from the truck’s onboard computer to a central server by radio (GSM) link, where they are processed and made available to the vehicle operator on a password-protected Internet site. In the same way the operator is also able to send data to the vehicle. As part of these vehicle management services, technical data such as the average fuel consumption, braking and gearshifting behaviour, vehicle mileage and service intervals can be obtained from each truck.” 

Another major benefit is that the system awards points for economical driving, explains Weiss. “The operator can use this score to schedule training activities for the drivers, introduce a bonus system and explain how the vehicles can be used even more economically and therefore with greater energy efficiency.”