Engine fault codes are used to diagnose potential and current engine maintenance issues before they result in a vehicle going down at an inopportune time. For operations and fleet managers this has a significant impact on the ability to accomplish the mission of deploying a fleet to deliver goods and service. It also has a significant impact on the cost associated with delivering these products and services. Any truck that is unable to make a delivery as a result of maintenance issues results in a significant financial loss. The breakdown of a single delivery vehicle can cost a company tens of thousands of dollars.

Consider the financial loss of a regional delivery truck breaking down on the highway 100 miles away from the warehouse. There are two kinds of losses in every situation. The first aspect is the hard cost which may include the inventory being lost or destroyed, towing fees, getting a second truck onsite to transport the goods, the labor to move the inventory either by hand or equipment that had to be transported to the site, items being put back in inventory, repackaging the goods, reloading the goods on another vehicle and delivering the goods to the same customer without any additional revenue. Reducing these situations by 10% annually could save a mid to large fleet customer hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The second aspect of loss associated with a vehicle breaking down is the soft cost or opportunity cost. When a delivery is not made it reduces customer confidence or can even result in the loss of an account. It may require a truck and personnel that would normally be making other deliveries to work overtime to make up missed deliveries. It also requires managers to take extensive time coordinating the efforts to recover a vehicle and inventory. It may take a truck out of service for days or weeks which either results in a direct loss or a company buying a “spare” truck to handle these situations.

With J1708 information being readily available, fleet maintenance technicians have a reasonable chance to forecast which issues are going to be most significant in the near future. With about 300 fault codes available, fleet maintenance departments can narrow the list inside the Checkmate software to identify which codes are most important. This level of prioritization means fleet maintenance personnel can focus on the most important maintenance compared to just doing maintenance in hopes of preventing vehicle down time. With a focused maintenance program and the controls provided by GPS data, most maintenance departments can shift from four to three annual maintenance sessions. At an estimated value of $300 per large truck, a company can save significantly on an annual basis.

When calculating the return on investment for the GO J1708 platform, consider the maintenance benefits and GPS data benefits separately and then together. A typical ROI for a passive GPS tracking system is about 4 months. Although the benefits of J1708 technology may take a little longer to implement, the benefit from a single incident forgone is very large and can likely be realized in the first six months. This means for a few hundred dollars more per vehicle a company has the potential to cumulatively save thousands more per vehicle annually for the life of the company. In the short term GO J1708 offers an immediate installation savings because the unit is installed by plugging into the J1708 port in the vehicles cab and sticking the antennas on the glass. Due to the simplicity an average of $125 per vehicle can be saved on installation contractor services for larger trucks. With this savings included the difference in the investment is about $175 per vehicle unit in the short term. In the long term the cost of the GO J1708 unit is actually the same because companies do not have the expenses of switching a unit from one truck to another or having an installer come onsite to check the unit if an issue develops. Typical expenses for removing a unit are about $50 per vehicle with another $125 to have a unit wired to the new vehicle. With the GO J1708 unit any employee can unplug the unit from one vehicle and plug it into another. Based on these figures there is no reason companies with diesel engine trucks (International and Cummings) should not invest in the GO 1708 unit.