SOUTH Staffordshire Water is doubling its investment with Tracker Network UK after recouping its initial £60,000 spending in eight months.

Cost savings in fuel, vehicle wear, driver down-time and mobile phone bills, as well as improvements in response times to urgent repairs and driver safety, were among the main motives behind the authority’s move.

It originally equipped 50 vehicles, ranging from 44-tonne HGVs to small vans, with Tracker systems in July last year.

The green light has now been given to continue the roll-out programme which will eventually encompass up to 130 vehicles within its 250-vehicle fleet.

Bob Stokes, commercial fleet manager for South Staffordshire Water, said: ‘Tracker’s VAM system has revolutionised our daily working practices. The knock-on effect of having it installed in 50 vehicles has been immense. Not only have we witnessed significant savings in fuel, vehicle maintenance and driver down-times due to the rescheduling of our daily routines. Our response times to emergency calls have fallen too.

‘Tracker helps us to monitor the exact movements of our vehicles which enables us to instantly re-deploy an engineer upon receipt of a call.’

Fitting the system to a vehicle fleet enables an operator to access all kinds of information about its fleet, 24 hours a day, through the Tracker website.