Innovative firefighting technology helps ensure firefighters have access to advanced tools and equipment designed to function safely and effectively on the fire ground.

But what about their apparatus?

Telematics improves all aspects of fire trucks, including the way they are built, operated and maintained. Telematics improves fleet maintenance, fleet operations and fleet budgeting by providing real-time asset data. Learn how in the blog post below.

What Are Fire Truck Telematics?

Fire truck telematics provide real-time data on the status of the fire truck. This real time data can help understand the vehicles current state of ‘health’ and can be used to track location and activity and it can be used to forecast or predict service needed on the vehicles.

By predicting or forecasting this information, the department can manage when vehicles enter the service facility, causing less disruption in station operations and supporting a much faster service interval.

How Do Fire Truck Telematics Work?

The Pierce® Command Zone electrical system, which is already integrated into Pierce apparatus, allows for not only standard truck vehicle data but also proprietary apparatus information to be completely integrated into our telematics solution.

The web-based solution transmits data via cellular connectivity to the cloud. A user can use a dashboard or portal to provide useful information about a vehicle or a fleet of vehicles to customers, service providers and others focused on fleet management.

Why Are Telematics Beneficial to Fire Departments?

Each fire department has unique requirements and expectations regarding fire truck functionality. Telematics enhances a fire department’s overall efficiency, safety, cost control, reporting and analysis for improved fleet intelligence.

Why is this important?

Fire truck maintenance can be expensive. The ability to track data and remotely access a fault condition can enhance predictive maintenance, reduce truck downtime and support optimal operating levels. Ultimately, telematics gives fire departments peace of mind because it provides a better understanding of a vehicle’s real-time status.

Telematics Reduce Vehicle Total Cost of Ownership

Pierce’s ClearSky™ telematics offers solutions to help fire departments reduce their total cost of ownership, including:

• Operational Efficiency. Telematics allows fire departments and support personal the opportunity to review the real-time status of a vehicle to see how the truck is performing and if any maintenance is required. With real-time visibility, departments can forecast repairs, order parts in advance, and be prepared with the right equipment when the truck enters service.
• Reduced Maintenance Costs. With real-time data on the condition of a vehicle, fire departments have the ability to proactively address fault codes or other required service. Deeper analytics accurately forecast budget requirements. Alerts catch early problems, allowing for faster, easier and less costly repairs as well as longer vehicle service life.

With the use of Pierce’s ClearSky telematics, the total cost of ownership can be reduced by addressing maintenance and operating costs with the least amount of disruption while improving vehicle readiness.

Pierce Command Zone purpose-built telematics monitor essential performance levels in real-time, minimize maintenance time and intervals and provide the greatest insight available into fire truck readiness.

Pierce Telematics Technology

Pierce's electrical systems are designed to evolve with fire industry technology while maintaining a reliable and configurable foundation comprised of proven hardware.

If your fire department already uses a fleet management solution, you can still take advantage of Pierce ClearSky. The system can complement and augment your existing telematics solution when fire trucks are outfitted with Command Zone.

What Is Included with ClearSky?

The ClearSky solution includes custom alerts, maintenance planning, truck data analytics, geofencing and reporting. This information can be viewed in several ways, including through dashboards, scheduled reports or with customized scheduled reports.

• Custom alerts. Alerts can be tailored to meet your requirements; from re-fueling notifications to email alerts when specific triggers are met (such as leaving the geo-zone for mutual aid.) Alerts offer fleet and operations managers the opportunity to see real-time status updates and take appropriate action.
• Maintenance planning. End users can customize maintenance plans for all fire apparatus to assure the department’s vehicles are ready to perform at optimal levels. Fleet managers have improved maintenance tracking to review maintenance schedules and customize maintenance intervals.
• Truck Data Analytics. Departments can monitor a broad range of data points such as daily fuel consumption, engine hours and idle engine hours. Data analytics have the potential to improve budget forecasting so departments can put money where it is needed the most.
• Reports. Reports can be viewed in two different ways: dashboards allow users to see at-a-glance data, while scheduled reports are customized based on metrics deemed to be the most meaningful to a department and can be programmed to perform calculations to streamline analysis. For example, an automated report can provide basic data points such as engine hours and idle hours, but can also take it a step further and calculate the percentage of time a truck spends idling.
• Geofencing. Geofencing creates a virtual perimeter around a defined geographic area, such as a fueling point or jurisdiction. The boundary can be a circle of any diameter or any customized shape or size needed. As a truck enters or exits the geofence, the activity is logged on the portal and an email notification can be sent to designated users. This improves fleet management and firefighting operations, and it also helps prevent theft or unauthorized use of vehicles.

The ClearSky cellular telematics system adds value by allowing secure web access to real-time data that includes vehicle readiness, maintenance planning and operational metrics. The ability to track and remotely access data increases vehicle uptime and overall performance.

Interested in learning more about adding a telematics solution to your existing fleet? Contact your local dealer now or comment below with your questions on fire truck telematics!