By implementing telematics in Quanta Services, Inc.'s mega fleet, Dave Meisel was able to achieve an array of efficiency improvements in reduced miles traveled, idling, and fuel consumption.

Meisel, Quanta's executive vice president of operations, detailed his results at Verizon Connect's 2018 Latitude business conference in October.

Meisel has been managing the Quanta fleet since September 2017. He began rolling out Verizon Connect's embedded telematics products in January. Through September, he added telematics devices to more than 24,000 of the company’s 53,000 vehicles, mostly vocational trucks that support Quanta businesses that manage and service power lines around the country.

"Verizon Connect allowed us to understand how much and where we drove or didn't drive in some cases," said Meisel. "Our fleet isn’t fully rolled out yet, but we did install Verizon Connect in 24,000 vehicles."

Meisel and his team is implementing several processes that helped him achieve his goals, including implementing a staffing-based fleet model, mileage management program, and process to manage new vehicles added to the fleet. He also designed vehicle specifications based on operator input and standardized the specs.

The gains were impressive. Between December of 2017 and September of 2018, Meisel saw significant improvements among fleet vehicles that were driven 125.7 million miles on 13.6 million trips and 3.8 million hours of driving. The vehicles idled for 5.5 million hours.

In that time, Meisel achieved a 9.6% reduction in miles per trip (to 9.64), a 3.5% reduction in drive time per vehicle (to 27.33 minutes), and a 4.8% reduction in miles per vehicle (to 910).

Less driving and idling helped Meisel significantly improve his fuel efficiency. During the year, he saw a 12.7% reduction in non-productive idling to 55% and a 20.9% improvement in miles per gallon to 7.98 mpg.

As a result, his fully burdened fuel cost, including fuel and overhead, declined significantly for both bulk and retail fuel purchases.

"The cheapest gallon of fuel that you will ever find, is the one that you don’t use," Meisel said.

Meisel arrived at Houston-based Quanta with deep fleet management experience. He spent more than 35 years managing the fleets of Fortune 500 companies such as San Francisco-based Pacific Gas & Electric; Consumers Energy in Michigan; Plano, Texas-based Frito-Lay; and Roadway Express throughout the Midwest.