Fleet Director 8.5 is the latest version of Teletrac’s fleet-management telematics system. Its claim to fame is new trending analytics feature, meaning managers can "instantly" spot performance peaks and valleys over any recent three-month period and thus improve critical profit-and-loss factors such as fuel consumption and safety performance.

The newest version also delivers Microsoft Silverlight mapping that’s said to be faster, more interactive and more detailed than ever. For example, dispatchers can now track vehicles more easily in unfamiliar locales by rotating the map’s orientation in "bird’s eye" view, offering realistic perspectives on streets and road signs.

Teletrac also recently released its latest in-cab colour terminal, featuring a QWERTY keyboard and other improvements such as predictive text for quicker, easier data and address entry.

With trending analytics in Fleet Director 8.5, Teletrac says managers can focus attention where it’s needed most by quickly answering key questions. Like, how much does fuel consumption rise and fall with changes in safety performance over time? Is this consistent fleetwide, or does it vary? Do excess idle time ‘hot spots’ show up in recurring patterns, such as with certain drivers in specific locales? Do speeding violations show patterns — among drivers, vehicles, locales, times of day, highway vs. street — that yield clues to improving safety?

Managers to instantly spot variations among nearly a dozen factors over any recent three-month time window.

Selecting dates/times and any specified group of vehicles, Fleet Director 8.5 users can interactively trend variables including miles per gallon, speed violations, driver incidents such as hard braking, exceptions, fault codes, utilization, idle time, miles driven, engine time, and travel time.  Six months of rolling data are instantly available, the company says, while older data can be easily restored for up to three years. Users can view data in hourly or daily increments, and also filter and search on trend reports.