Town & Country Sanitation Reduces Idle Time with Teletrac

Even the most veteran of fleet managers may not realize how much fuel their vehicles waste by simply idling.

Since 1991, Town & Country Sanitation Inc. has been serving parts of Wisconsin and has gained the reputation as one of the fastest growing and most environmentally protective waste management and recycling companies in the region.

In an effort to further that standing, Town & Country partnered with Teletrac to identify ways to better manage their trucks.

To start out, Town & Country had Teletrac install their Fleet Director platform on 30 of the company’s 70 trucks.

“The day after the installs were finished, we looked at Teletrac’s reporting feature and found our trucks had 129 hours of idling,” said Dustin Enke, co-owner of Town & Country.

Idling engines can cause a huge headache for fleet companies. In fact, an idling vehicle can consume one to 1.5 gallons of fuel per hour. And according to the American Trucking Association, one hour of idling per day over the course of a year will result in the equivalent of 64,000 miles in engine wear when adding up all the contributing factors.

Enke didn’t want to waste another moment or drop of fuel with such an easily correctable issue.

“We called an all-company meeting the next day and showed everyone what we were doing and what was going to happen if they didn’t get on board,” Enke said.

With the assistance of the Teletrac software, Enke said Town & Country Sanitation was able to quickly reduce engine idling among their drivers.

“Within two days of that meeting, idling has been slashed,” Enke said. “And our drivers that were out on their runs until 4:30, 5:00-5:30 every day have been getting back at 3:00, 3:30.”

The decreased fuel costs and drive time have resulted in a reduction of overtime and dramatically slashed idle time, making the entire operation at Town & Country Sanitation a much more profitable one.