Plumbing Medic, Inc., located In Gilbert, Arizona, is a locally owned and operated plumbing company specializing in all major and minor issues for residential and commercial plumbing. The company prides itself on high-level customer service, quality of products and ethical standards of both services and employees.

Plumbing Medic started researching GPS tracking because it needed to know the current locations of its vehicles. “Our vehicles carry expensive equipment and parts, so it is important for us to know their whereabouts at all times,” said Tami Gurka, dispatcher for Plumbing Medic.

Another reason that Plumbing Medic started looking into GPS tracking was to improve time management and accountability of its mobile workforce. Since drivers are spread out all over the Phoenix metropolitan area, the team had no way to know what they were doing in between jobs.

The last big challenge that Plumbing Medic was looking to solve with a GPS tracking solution was eliminating fuel card fraud. It needed a way to monitor fuel usage, when and where technicians were filling up on fuel and how many miles were driven to ensure all purchases were legitimate.
How it was solved: with the use of GPS Insight’s Vehicle & Asset Tracking Solution, Plumbing Medic now has visibility of where there technicians are and how long it will take them to get to the next job site with access to the real-time mapping and ETA features. Having the ability to locate any vehicle’s location in real-time has provided better visibility over expensive equipment and parts in the field.

To raise employee accountability, Plumbing Medic uses the solution to prevent unauthorized usage of company vehicles by receiving odd hours alerts.

By using GPS tracking to identify and correct this behavior, plumbing fleets are able to hold employees accountable and ensure company vehicles are only used for business purposes.

Another challenge Plumbing Medic was able to solve with GPS Insight was eliminating fuel card fraud. By integrating their WEX fuel card data into GPS Insight’s platform, Plumbing Medic can easily monitor all fuel card purchases. Through this integration, Plumbing Medic is able to view GPS Insight’s fuel card transaction reports to make sure fuel purchased and miles driven match up to ensure all purchases are valid.

“We were able to identify one of our technicians using a company vehicle to cross states lines for personal use; we received an odd hours alert in the middle of the night that one of our vehicles was moving in another state,” Gurka said.

Along with solving its original business challenges, Plumbing Medic also uses GPS Insight to make dispatching simple by eliminating time that would have been spent on the phone trying to figure out technicians’ current locations.

“On average, I would make 150 calls per day, and now I make virtually no calls because most communication is done through GPS Insight,” Gurka said.

Plumbing Medic has increased response times during emergency dispatch. When it receives an emergency call it can quickly send the closest and best vehicle to the jobsite.

When asked why other fleet professionals should consider using a GPS tracking solution, Gurka said, “I highly recommend GPS Insight to any company with a fleet. Try it, you will love it, and wonder how you ever worked a day without it; you won’t want to work another day without it.” 

GPS Insight works with businesses and government entities that have fleets of vehicles and other mobile assets to solve unique challenges through increased revenue, reduced costs and reduced risk. For more information, please visit http://www.gpsinsight.com/gps-tracking/