CHANTILLY, VA - Fleet managers up and down the East coast of the U.S. will have their hands full this week as hurricane Sandy pummels the coast from Florida to Maine. In the mid-Atlantic region, winds are expected to top 60 miles per hour, up to 7" of rain is expected to fall, and seas will get rough. Fortunately, losing valuable fleet data or finding missing vehicles won't be one challenge fleet managers will have to struggle with. Solutions such as Agile Access Control, Inc.'s FleetCommander fleet and motor pool software are hosted in a secure, fault-tolerant facility far from the wind and rain.
"FleetCommander will remain steady and function without interruption during the hurricane," says Agile President Ed Smith. Even if local computer centers are shut down or become unavailable, fleet staff and drivers with access to web browsers will have access to their fleet software. No data loss or risk of paper-based records being damaged or lost will occur, says Smith.
This isn't the first big test for web-based fleet software. FleetCommander came through in a big way during hurricane Katrina. When most major computer resources around New Orleans were damaged, lost, or unavailable, one fleet manager was able to rapidly pull the fleet back together. Using a web browser, the fleet manager for a large New Orleans-based commercial fleet was able to go online and access the remotely hosted FleetCommander application. The reality facing the fleet manager was that the parking lot was near empty and he needed to know where his fleet was. Some cars had been stolen in the chaos. But many were legitimately checked out from the motor pool and had not yet been returned due to impassable roads. FleetCommander's Dashboard showed, at a glance, which vehicles were late returning to the fleet. A click of the mouse provided a list, with contact information, of those vehicles that were past due returning to the fleet. A report showed the complete list of inventory that was supposed to be present but was not in the lot. Armed with that information, plans were made to re-build the fleet.
