Moon mission blasts off, overcomes pointing problem

The Minotaur 5 rocket races away from its launch pad
at Wallops Island, Va. Credit: Orbital Sciences Corp./Thom Baur

As reported by Spaceflight Now: NASA's latest moon mission, a $280 million project to study the lunar atmosphere, soared to space aboard a Minotaur 5 rocket Friday in a brilliant late-night launch from Virginia that lit up skies all along the U.S. East Coast.

The launch put the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer in a near-perfect orbit stretching more than 170,000 miles from Earth at its farthest point, and the LADEE spacecraft successfully deployed from the Minotaur rocket about 23 minutes after an on-time liftoff from Wallops Island, Va., at 11:27 p.m. EDT Friday (0327 GMT Saturday).

Observers from North Carolina to New Hampshire caught a glimpse of the stubby white launcher streaking into space on an easterly heading over the Atlantic Ocean.

LADEE almost immediately radioed ground controllers and confirmed it was healthy after the whirlwind trip to space.

But the 844-pound moon probe ran into trouble moments after separating from the Minotaur's upper stage, when LADEE's on-board computer detected high electrical currents in the satellite's reaction wheels and shut them down.

After scrambling to understand and fix the problem overnight, NASA announced Saturday afternoon the reaction wheels were back up and running. The spinning wheels generate momentum to keep LADEE pointed in the right direction.

Artist's concept of the LADEE spacecraft firing its maneuvering
 thrusters. Credit: NASA Ames/Dana Berry

The probe uses thrusters and reaction wheels to control its orientation in space, but the miniature rocket engines burn precious propellant, and the six-month duration of LADEE's mission is already limited by the craft's fuel reserves.

LADEE tried to use its reaction wheels to null out excess spinning after deployment from the Minotaur 5's upper stage, but the probe's on-board computer sensed the wheels were using too much electrical current and shut them down as a safety precaution.

Officials said the mission's design allowed engineers several weeks to resolve the problem, but NASA announced Saturday afternoon the reaction wheels were reactivated and LADEE was in a stable pointing mode.

"This was determined to be the result of fault protection limits put in place prior to launch to safeguard the reaction wheels," NASA said in a statement posted online. "The limits that caused the powering off of the wheels soon after activation were disabled, and reaction wheel fault protection has been selectively re-enabled."

The spacecraft was otherwise healthy after Friday night's fiery launch.

"Our engineers will determine the appropriate means of managing the reaction wheel fault protection program. Answers will be developed over time and will not hold up checkout activities," said Butler Hine, LADEE project manager at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.

"Like any new venture, things don't always go quite as planned," said John Grunsfeld, NASA's associate administrator for science.

Pete Worden, director of the Ames Research Center, said early Saturday there was no indication of anything wrong with the reaction wheels themselves. NASA's Kepler telescope, another mission managed by Ames, was knocked offline earlier this year by reaction wheel failures.

Shaped like a bullet, standing 7.7 feet tall and stretching about 4.7 feet in diameter, LADEE's outer skin is covered in power-generating solar panels. That design feature, introduced to add to the mission's simplicity and resiliency, proved wise after the post-launch attitude control glitch. Other missions relying on deployable solar panels must be aimed at the sun to generate electricity, making a sudden loss of attitude control potentially fatal.

LADEE was launched into an oval-shaped orbit extending more than 170,000 miles from Earth, and the mission's plan calls for the spacecraft to complete three circuits of the planet before it is captured by the moon's gravity and pulled away from Earth.

The spacecraft will fire its main rocket engine in early October. The burn will brake the spacecraft into lunar orbit before it begins pursuing the mission's two objectives: test a high-tech laser communications package, and answer fundamental questions about the moon's atmosphere and dust.

Veteran space photographer Ben Cooper snapped this photo of the
Minotaur 5's first and second stage burns from the top of
Rockefeller Center in New York about 200 miles from the launch site.
See a larger image. Credit: Ben Cooper/Launchphotography.com

LADEE's first task at the moon will be the activation of a laser communications payload designed by MIT Lincoln Laboratory to wring out advanced technologies which could enable broadband data links with future missions traveling into the solar system.

The month-long laser demo will link LADEE with ground terminals positioned in New Mexico, California and the Canary Islands.

LADEE will try to send and receive data packets transmitted through a laser beam connecting the spacecraft and the ground terminals at a range of about 250,000 miles.

"NASA has a need for faster download speeds for data from space," said Don Cornwell, manager of the laser communications payload. "We'd like to be able to send high-resolution images, and even movies in 3D, from satellites that not only orbit the Earth, but also from probes that will go to the moon and beyond."

LADEE will begin the science phase of its mission at the conclusion of the laser communications testing.

The small orbiter's instruments will scoop up dust particles, identify the chemical make-up of the moon's atmosphere, and look for signs of hydrated compounds, such as water and hydroxyl (OH), migrating from the moon's middle latitudes toward polar cold traps in permanent shadow, where scientists say ice can sit undisturbed for billions of years.

"LADEE has two main science goals: To understand the lunar atmosphere as well as the dust environment around the moon," said Sarah Noble, LADEE's program scientist.

LADEE will dip as close as 12 miles to the moon, skimming mountaintops and sampling material just above the lunar surface.

The moon's atmosphere is not what many envision, Noble said. Its atoms never collide, an attribute which makes the lunar atmosphere an exosphere.

The probe's instruments will try to find out what drives the tenuous atmosphere, its composition, and how new constituents are added from the lunar surface.

LADEE will also observe dust particles streaming high above the moon's surface in a mysterious process scientists think is responsible for a predawn glow over the lunar horizon spotted in the 1960s by early robotic missions, then recounted by Apollo astronauts who sketched what they saw in journals.

LADEE's mission started with a flash of orange light and a rapid, thunderous ascent into space from launch pad 0B at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, a complex leased and operated by the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority. The launch pad lies on property owned by NASA's Wallops Flight Facility.

Minotaur 5 rocket

The Minotaur 5 booster's first stage - a decommissioned motor from a Peacekeeper nuclear missile - shot the five-stage, 80-foot-tall launcher to an altitude of 76,000 feet in less than a minute, leaving a twisting gray smoke plume hovering over the marshlands of Virginia's Eastern Shore.

Four more rocket motors fired in succession over the next 20 minutes to inject LADEE into the right orbit.

It was the first flight of a Minotaur 5 rocket, which relies on flight-proven components from smaller boosters in the Minotaur family.

A quick look at data from the launch showed the Minotaur 5 performed flawlessly, according to Lou Amorosi, the rocket's program director at Orbital Sciences Corp., the Minotaur's prime contractor under an agreement with the U.S. Air Force, which manages the program.

"The rocket itself did everything we asked of it, and it was a picture-perfect mission," said Air Force Col. Urban Gillespie, the Minotaur's mission director from the Space Development and Test Directorate at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M.

Scout, battery-powered, GPS-guided boat, launched in Rhode Island, en route to Spain

As reported by Providence Journal: Will three be a charm for Scout?

Narrowly escaping a fatal collision with an 804-foot tanker might suggest so.

On its third bid at an unprecedented transatlantic journey, the autonomous vessel designed and built by college students from Rhode Island has made it much farther than the first two aborted attempts earlier this summer.

Not only that, the solar-powered, GPS-guided boat is still motoring in the direction of its destination — Sanlúcar, Spain.

“It’s been going really nicely,” said Dylan Rodriguez, who along with his teammates has returned to college. “She’s been averaging 25 miles a day.”

Wednesday, Scout, which at best can only travel a few miles an hour, had made it more than 265 miles from Sakonnet Point since its Aug. 24 launch. Due to its zigzagging course — Scout is at the mercy of winds and tides when its batteries are drained and not yet recharged — the vessel had actually traveled nearly 500 miles.

Scout apparently set a record for autonomous surface vessels when it logged more than 60 miles, according to Rodriguez.

Although they equipped the 12-foot kayak-shaped vessel with software to guide it to Spain and solar panels to charge its batteries, Scout’s designers have no control over their creation while it is at sea.

That’s why they could do nothing but hold their breath when they learned from marine traffic reports that Scout was potentially in the path of the crude oil tanker Yasa Golden Dardanel. Bound for Portland, Maine, the tanker ended up coming within six-tenths of a mile, possibly even closer, to Scout.

When Scout kept transmitting its location, it was clear it had avoided a disaster at sea.

“Crossed paths with a monster,” the team wrote on Facebook. “Let’s hope for very few run-ins like this from here on out.”

Other small problems have surfaced, including a bug in the computer coding that has sent Scout on a more direct route than planned, but one that could mean more time in shipping lanes off the East Coast and Spain.
As of midweek, Scout was on the Georges Bank fishing grounds, south of Nova Scotia. It still had another 3,000-plus miles to reach its destination.

Scout is progressing slower than it would have if its journey had begun earlier in the summer when the weather was less stormy and there was more daylight to power the craft. At this rate, it could take four months for Scout to cross the Atlantic.

But Rodriguez isn’t discouraged.

“It’s almost 10 percent of the way there,” he said.

To monitor how Scout is doing, go to www.gotransat.com/tracking.

How the car of the future will keep you healthy

Keeping in your lane is especially important on high
mountain roads.

As reported by Tech Radar: Short of hiring a nurse to drive with you on a commute, the modern car of today is not exactly a medical asset.

In fact, according to recent highway safety stats, collisions in the USA are now more common and there were more fatalities compared to the previous year.

Your car knows almost nothing about your medical condition, such as whether your pulse is racing, if you are having a heart attack, or if you've recently started taking heavy medication.

But that could change over the next decade, as vehicles monitor your health as you drive, determine if you are fit to drive and even intervene to prevent an accident. They might even dim the lights to fit your mood, play ambient music during stressful road conditions, and drive you to a hospital.

The recently-announced Ford S-Max is just a concept car but it can monitor your heart rate and blood sugar levels, giving a clear example of the kind of developments being made.

Current state of technology

The earliest signs of a car becoming a life saver occurred in 2003 when Lexus introduced its Pre-Collision System (or PCS). The tech, accurate within millimetres, helps to determine if a driver is paying attention.

In the 2013 Lexus LS, for example, a more advanced PCS can detect whether your eyes are open or if you're getting drowsy. If a crash is imminent, the car will alert you. If you're still not paying attention, the PCS will brake to reduce your speed.

Of course, many modern cars already offer life-saving safety measures. The 2014 Infiniti Q50, for example, can detect an imminent crash and apply the brakes, and a lane-keeping system makes sure you don't swerve off the road inadvertently.

In the 2013 Infiniti JX35, a reversing system will stop the car if there is an object or person behind you.

And in one of the most advanced systems, introduced only in the Japanese version of the Nissan Elgrand, the car knows when you are parking and can detect if you meant to apply the brake and not the accelerator. The car won't surge forward or back and will suppress the speed for you.

Mercedes offers an attention monitoring system in several models. The system watches multiple variables such as steering position and how long you've been driving. You'll see a "coffee break" notice appear in the dash if you're driving too erratically.

None of these systems actually monitor the health of the driver, though. Like any robotic device, they use pre-programmed algorithms to watch steering and lane position. Yet, the technology is available to make the car more like a roving medical kit to help us live better.

Next steps for better health monitoring

There's something much bigger in the works, according to experts and futurists. Several car manufacturers hinted at a future when the car will become more medically aware.

"In the future, cars will automatically drive you to the nearest doctor or hospital if they sense a problem with you or your passengers," says Thilo Koslowski, vice president and distinguished automotive analyst at Gartner.

"The car might suggest that the driver pulls over and takes a break or notify family members that the driver's health isn't where it should be."

One of the next steps in monitoring the drive might involve looking for sudden blackouts. Hideki Hada, a Toyota engineer, told TechRadar that sudden changes in driver attention such as a blackout are a well-known problem in the industry, and something that requires more research.

The trade-off, of course, might be whether a sudden movement, such as reaching into the back seat while driving, would trigger a false alarm that annoys the driver.

Another possibility is monitoring the pulse of a driver. Hada says that this is in an experimental stage by reading the pulse from the driver's hand on the steering wheel to determine if there is a concern. "Real-world challenges include people wearing gloves, drivers holding various locations of the steering wheel, environmental and individual variations," says Hada.


Hada says a truck company in Japan experimented with a system that wakes up a driver by emitting an aroma in the cab after detecting the driver is drowsy. Another possible enhancement is that instead of playing a loud warning to startle a driver, which itself could cause a crash, Hada says one option could be to play a softer message, such as your own child's voice.

Koslowski says there is a distinct possibility that the car will become much more aware of how you are driving. If you are drowsy, the radio might flip to an ambient rock station.

During a stretch of road that is more prone to collisions between cars, the vehicle might automatically dim the lights and enable a road tracking system that looks closely for dangers. More importantly, the car will know if you are suddenly ill and a danger to yourself - and other drivers.

"The car won't be able to do an X-ray anytime soon, but it will detect if health-related aspects are preventing you from driving the way you should," Koslowski says.

Challenges ahead

In 2011, Nissan presented a concept car that could tell if you were driving drunk. A sensor in the gear stick monitored for a high alcohol level. If the car determined that the driver was over the alcohol limit, you couldn't put it into first gear and a message would appear in the nav system: "Attention Assist - Drowsiness Detected".

As you might expect, some wondered if your car should know if you are about to commit a crime.

Steve Yaeger, a Nissan spokesperson, told us that the challenge with these systems lies in knowing whether drivers will be comfortable giving up their privacy in this way. For example, he says that there is already the automotive tech available to take the body temperature of a driver, which might be used to determine if he or she is unwell, but drivers don't want that intrusion.

Then there is the challenge of sharing private information. If the car can read your blood pressure and pulse, it can also share this data (in the upcoming Microsoft Xbox One, the new Kinect 2 sensor can tell if you have elevated pulse just by monitoring your skin color).

"It would get more problematic if this information is shared with other organisations such as health insurance providers or the police," says Koslowski.

The good news is that drivers will adopt and approve of these measures if they do provide a health benefit. We may be willing to let our car drive us to the hospital if the alternative is that we die on a lonely roadside.

And, we may even approve of a breath analyzer to see if we are too intoxicated to drive a loved one home from a party. The technology is waiting in the wings; now we just need society to catch up to it.

OBD-II Device Helps You Save Fuel by Turning Safe Driving into a Competition

As reported by Zdnet: I love car apps. 

I regularly use the Waze app to find out what's going on with traffic (INRIX looks good too), Gas Buddy to find cheap gas, and RoadAhead to find out what food options are at the next rest area. I used to obsessively track my fuel economy with GasCubby until I got a car with the MPG on the instrument panel. I also love the iPhone-connected Cobra Atom radar detector, and commuting would be virtually impossible for me without the Downcast and Audible apps.

I just received my private beta Link hardware from Automatic and am enjoying it immensely. Automatic Link (pictured) is a small hardware device that plugs into your vehicle's diagnostic/data port (usually located just below the dash) that tracks your driving habits and gives you tips on how to save money by driving more economically.

Link connects to the free iOS app over Bluetooth Low Energy and displays driving data in an elegant and easy-to-understand user interface (UI) that tracks how many miles you've driven, driving hours, fuel usage (in dollars), and actual MPG, even for older cars that don't display fuel efficiency on the dashboard. 

An exceedingly cool features is that Automatic detects fill-ups and tracks local gas prices (on newer vehicles) to show you how much you're spending on each trip in real dollars. Automatic combines all the data it collects into a score on a 100 point scale and I was able to score a 96 in my first test of the hardware.

In addition to the data provided by the iOS app, the Link hardware contains a small speaker that emits different sounds to alert you when you're accelerating or braking too fast, or speeding — which can have a negative impact on fuel economy. 

While it bears a resemblance to the SnapShot device from Progressive Insurance, instead of ratting out your bad driving habits to your insurer (who could raise your rates or even drop you) Automatic only shares your driving details with you. You can read their privacy policy here. Insert your favorite NSA joke here.

In addition to its fuel-saving features, Automatic has several OnStar-like features, minus the recurring fees. The Automatic Link includes an accelerometer that can detect many types of crashes and can use your phone's data connection to report a crash to 911* with your name, location, and vehicle description. After help is dispatched, Automatic can send a text message to a loved one to let them know what happened, where you are, and that help is on the way.

Automatic can send you a push notification when the dreaded "Check Engine" light comes on and can decode the cryptic Engine Trouble Codes generated by your vehicle and offer possible solutions. For simple problems, you can even clear the light yourself saving a trip to the shop. It can even help remember where you parked, which I could have used when searching for my car in the long-term parking lot at midnight last night after a week's vacation. 

Check to see if your vehicle is compatible and find more answers on the Automatic QA page.

Taxing Fuel at the Local Level - County Fuel Tax Levies in Nevada Start a Trend

With Federal, State and now County taxes being levied on fuel,
combined with no recognized credit on Count taxes toward IFTA;
is this a kind of double taxation?

As reported by Fleet Owner: In a possible harbinger of how transportation funding will be generated in this country, Nevada’s Clark County recently passed a two-year fuel tax increase due to take effect Jan. 1 next year – an effort that should result in a 3-cent per gallon tax hike that’s expected to raise $700 million for transportation projects across Southern Nevada.

While local fuel taxes aren't necessarily new – indeed, Nevada’s Washoe County passed a similar fuel tax hike on diesel back in 2009, and we’ll get to that in a bit here – trucking’s involvement in crafting Clark County’s fuel tax plan certainly is, and the industry did so in an effort to head off some very nasty ripple effects.

Thus, as more and more local governments potentially line up to institute such localized fuel taxation, truckers may want to keep Nevada’s experience with such taxes handy.

First, let’s examine Clark County’s fuel tax plan more closely. First of all, it’s a county ordinance that indexes the fuel tax to inflation; a move that is expected to result in that 3-cent per gallon tax increase mentioned earlier.

That fuel tax boost will, in turn, allow the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada (RTC) to issue bonds to fund 183 regional transportation projects, including developing Interstate 11, widening U.S.-95 in the northwest part of Las Vegas from Ann Road to Kyle Canyon, bringing the 215 Beltway to freeway standards, among others.

Here’s another key part of this tax plan: all of the funds generated by Clark County’s fuel tax hike will only go toward projects in Clark County.

Now, without indexing, RTC estimated that it would only have about $22.4 million per year over the next 10 years to spend on local streets and highway projects – equivalent to building one interchange per year, one mile of roadway per jurisdiction per year, or one beltway segment without bridges per year.

“Figuring out how best to raise revenue to fund roadway projects is an issue that not only affects Clark County but our entire nation,” noted Tina Quigley, RTC’s general manager, in a statement. “We believe that indexing the fuel tax to inflation is the quickest alternative with the least impact on our community to help address our streets and highways budget that will allow us to help create a transportation vision for our future.”

That’s all very nice, but Nevada’s truckers quickly realized that such localized fuel taxes don’t count towards International Fuel Tax Agreement or “IFTA” calculations – and that leaves carriers both large and small open to “double taxation,” Paul Enos, executive director of the Nevada Trucking Association, told me.

Now, as all truckers know, IFTA is a compact signed by the 48 contiguous states and 10 Canadian provinces to ensure that fuel taxes are paid not at the point of purchase (where a truck fills up on fuel) but at point of use. “This ensures that interstate trucking companies that travel on Nevada’s roads are paying for their use on Nevada’s roads, even if they do not buy fuel in our state,” Enos explained.

Thus every interstate trucking company is required to keep track of their miles traveled in every jurisdiction, and report those miles traveled to their base state, which then sends the revenue due to other states. If a carrier owes more to a particular state, Enos said, they send in a tax payment. If the carrier has paid too much they receive a refund.

Ah, but here’s the critical part: IFTA only deals with state taxes and will not collect, or credit, local taxes unless they are applied statewide.
Now, with that salient fact in mind, let’s return to Nevada’s Washoe County, which implemented an “indexed to inflation” fuel tax hike four years ago.

Enos explained that Washoe’s fuel tax hike initially started at 3 cents per gallon but has increased by about 3 cents per gallon every year since – and none of it counts towards IFTA calculations.

As an example of how that hurts truckers he pointed to Washoe-based carriers that operate a goodly portion of miles in nearby California. The Golden State imposes a fuel tax of 44.5 cents per gallon, whereas Nevada’s state fuel 27 cents per gallon. Ah, but truckers in Washoe County pay a further local fuel tax of 13.5 cents per gallon, meaning they are shelling out about 40.5 cents per gallon in total state and local fuel taxes. Yet that extra 13.5 cents per gallon doesn’t count towards their IFTA payments.

End result? Although Washoe County-based truckers actually pay 40.5 cents per gallon in fuel taxes, they only get assessed the difference between the California state rate of 44.5 cents and the Nevada state rate of 27 cents per gallon. This effectively is double taxation on the California miles because instead of having to make up only 4 cents per gallon in fuel tax differences between Nevada and California, Washoe truckers must make up 17.5 cents per gallon.

Enos told me that, for one Washoe County-based trucking firm that operates 80% of its miles in California, that translates into $120,000 in extra fuel tax payments to the Golden State per year. In a word: blech!

“On top of all that, the Washoe County fuel tax plan can’t be changed until 2019 until the bonds it’s indexed against come due,” Enos told me. “That’s why we got involved in the Clark County fuel tax effort: we wanted to ensure more Nevada trucking companies don’t become competitively disadvantaged due to higher fuel taxes.”

In Clark County’s case, then, the trucking community crafted a fuel tax rebate structure similar to IFTA’s and managed by Nevada’s department of motor vehicles (DMV). Enos explained that having a single state entity collect and manage and collect such local fuel taxes – DMV does the same for Washoe County – is critical as it significantly reduces administrative costs, thus ensuing more tax money ends up funding transportation projects.

Enos also believes that the trucking community should prepare itself for more “localized fuel tax hikes” as they are the wave of the future to his mind.

“No one wants to raise taxes; not the federal government, not the state legislatures,” he explained. “In our case in Clark County, the state legislature designed this fuel tax, allowed for DMV to collect and manage it, yet then pushed the final decision to implement it down to the board of commissioners.”

Enos also said Nevada’s trucking industry saw this coming for a while and realized it would be very difficult – if not impossible – to stop. “So we said how do we get involved to ensure our industry doesn't suffer competitively from this? I hate to be a trailblazer – it certainly isn't fun – but we had to face the reality of this [Clark County fuel tax] and make the best of it,” he said. “Given that it mirrors the current structure of IFTA, it’s a system that’s as fair as can be.”

Now we must wait and see how many other localities follow Nevada’s example, crafting fuel taxes to pay for local transportation projects. 

Five “Hurdles” Holding Back Adoption of Fuel Saving Systems for Trucking

As reported by Fleet Owner: A recent report compiled by the North American Council for Freight Efficiency (NACFE) and Cascade Sierra Solutions (CSS) on behalf of the International Council for Clean Transportation(ICCT) determined that five major “hurdles” are preventing many heavy-duty fleets from adopting a wide range of fuel efficiency technologies: hurdles that include lack of access to capital and uncertainty regarding payback calculations.

“The report clearly shows the gap between perceptions and reality of the adoption of technologies,” noted Mike Roeth, NACFE’s executive director. “If implemented, currently available trucking technologies could earn fuel savings of as much as $20,000 per truck with a payback time of less than 18 to 24 months.”

The five main hurdles identified in the report are: payback time and high initial cost of trucks; lack of access to capital; lack of credible information; insufficient reliability; and unavailability of technology.

Yet Roeth told Fleet Owner that lack of credible information on fuel savings is the single biggest barrier preventing fleets from adopting any number of technologies aimed at boost fuel efficiency.

“Most of the big fleets told us that if they get credible information detailing real-world fuel savings for a particular technology, then they usually can easily find the money to invest in it,” he explained. To his mind, credible information for payback analysis is the “main domino” that causes all the other barriers to fall away.

On the flip side, Roeth believes determining that a lack of “credible information” is the main hold up for adoption by many fleets is a major benefit, because it’s “a relatively easy problem to solve” via better constructed testing.

“One of the things we've found is that many technology providers will do a test with one fleet and believe that fleet’s operation is representative of the entire industry,” he pointed out. “So better research means looking more closely at all the different applications within the trucking business so such systems get placed in the right truck duty-cycle for maximum return.”

Using GPS to Measure a 'Quality' Stop

Which is more important: reducing overall miles or
managing miles and customer activity together?

As reported by Automotive Fleet: When you think of fuel costs, do you think of the price per gallon or do you think of the importance of each trip you make? Have you ever thought that your company appears to be keeping busy, but company growth is not reflecting the activity level?

GPS tracking technology promises to reduce the number of miles your fleet vehicles drive. But it's less about reducing miles or the most efficient trip—it's about valuing the quality of the stops you make.


Example 1
A distributor plans a 64-mile route—32 miles out, 32 miles back—to make an $80 delivery with a $20 profit margin on the goods being delivered. The minimum fleet cost to deliver any product or service on a 64 mile trip is $0.50 per mile, so this trip has a net loss of at least $12.

The distributor just paid the customer $12 to deliver the product to them.

Action Step: Create a Customer Profile
Profile each customer into a "customer type" and assign a priority on a scale of 1 to 5. Single piece, low margin, but frequent order customers can be grouped and served at greater net profit inclusive of the physical delivery costs.

Example 2

Evaluating customer location, routes and travel times can
help increase profit margins by detailing travel costs.

A national field service organization has several branch offices. Each branch office has an average of 16 vehicles. The company decides to deploy a GPS system to measure activity through the day, the number of customer stops, the duration of each stop, the distance between stops, the total miles driven, the starting time in the morning and the arrival time at the end of the day.

Before deployment, each vehicle drove an average 987 miles per week and made 20 customer stops. After deployment, the vehicles average 1,060 miles per week and 25 customer stops.

As the fleet manager, you care that these vehicles are driving more than they did before GPS and are therefore costing more in fuel. But consider this—the average mileage to serve each customer dropped by about seven miles by deploying measurement-based GPS technology. It is costing the company at least $3.50 less on average for each customer visit at $.50 per mile. Who has their eye on the ball for the company—the person wanting to reduce overall miles or the person managing miles and customer activity together?

Action Step: Measure Average Miles per Customer Visit
By valuing fuel and activity together, your company can best see the impact of fuel combined with mileage and customer visits.

Include Engine Diagnostics
Using asset management tools with engine diagnostics capable of reading VIN, mileage, voltage, oil and active engine faults will enable you to extend the maintenance of your fleet to a cycle of health-based maintenance. By monitoring the vehicle's engine health, you can keep your fleet running at the lowest preventive maintenance costs possible.

The Big Picture
"You can't manage what you don't measure." In good economic times, measurement technologies that include GPS with engine diagnostics, driver safety and mileage recording technology are often used to improve driver safety and reduce fleet operating costs.

Today, measurement technologies are even more needed to plan and make strategic decisions on where and how to direct field resources, sales, technical, support and delivery–everyone you've got.

Action Steps: Set Goals Based on Priority Customer Visit

• Record, measure as much as you can.
• Review how time is spent including commuting to work, while driving and with customers.
• Set goals based not solely on daily miles driven but on reducing the average number of miles per priority customer visit and measuring fuel consumed per customer trip.
• Monitor goals and communicate positive results with employees.
• Repeat steps 1 to 4.