In this episode of The Fire Protection Podcast, Drew sits down and talks all things fleet management and technological innovations with Matt Curtis, Director of Partnerships at Azuga.
Innovations in fleet management that track vehicle maintenance, encourage safe driving, and allow technician tracking and route optimization have changed the game for fire protection and other field service businesses. Additionally, the approach to fleet management has shifted as retention and staffing shortages have become major challenges across industries. Matt explains: “The changes in demographics have affected how GPS can be used, from a ‘spy on your guy,’ to a ‘Hey, good job, you did awesome.’” Increased visibility has impacted insurance, safe driving incentives, and vehicle maintenance–and things are just getting started.
Watch or listen to this episode of The Fire Protection Podcast for a deep dive into changing fleet management technology and how it impacts fire protection businesses and technicians–and their communities.
Timecodes:
- 00:00 – Introduction
- 03:13 – Matt’s Background
- 05:26 – Staffing Shortages & Fleet Management
- 06:41 – Impact of Commercial Insurance
- 09:22 – Fleet Management in Fire Protection
- 13:53 – Creating a Safety Culture with Changing Technology
- 22:43 – Parking: Backing In
- 25:07 – Fire Protection Successes
- 27:49 – Route Optimization
- 31:43 – AI in Fleet Management
- 37:01 – Electric Vehicles
- 41:16 – Wrap-Up
Full Transcript
Drew Slocum:
This is Episode 66 of The Fire Protection Podcast powered by Inspect Point. Today, my guest is Matt Curtis of Azuga. Azuga is a software company in the fleet management space. Funny enough, they’re owned by Bridgestone, the tire company, which we get into pretty early on in the podcast. So, it’s interesting that a manufacturer is getting into the software space and data collection space. May be interesting for things to come within our fire protection world.
But yeah, Azuga is in the fire protection world at this point, managing a variety of fleets for fire protection companies out there. So it was interesting to see, kind of where that started with analytics on maps years ago, to where it currently is with certain technology that they have and others have as well. But also where it looks in the future with AI, predictive maintenance, and really why–you can kind of see why a manufacturer like Bridgestone is getting into the space for all the data analytics and what’s going on with different fleets of vehicles.
So, Matt’s a wealth of knowledge, been in the space for a while, and it was really cool to talk to him. And he loves our fire protection industry. So onto the podcast, and again, thanks for liking and subscribing. See you soon.
Hey Matt, what’s going on?
Matt Curtis:
Good morning.
Drew Slocum:
You got your Bridgestone gear on. I like that.
Matt Curtis:
I went nuts. I got all this stuff they sent me. I got to go to the Indy 500, so they got all this cool gear, got my hat signed, so I’m going to leverage it.
Drew Slocum:
That’s probably fun. You’re going to have to send me some Bridgestone golf balls. I hear Tiger Wood. So it must make you better, right?
Matt Curtis:
I wish I had that as a reason to be so bad, I haven’t used any Bridgestone balls yet. I was in the headquarters a few weeks ago. They had the whole wall of the balls that were used by Tiger and trophies and whatnot, but I just started getting into golfing recently. Went golfing a few weeks ago and that was fun. I kind of got into it.
Drew Slocum:
Yeah, it’s kind of funny that Bridgestone is, and by the way, I’d love to hear the story how Azuga is kind of partnered with Bridgestone. But Bridgestone’s into golf balls, weirdly enough, maybe they’re a good manufacturer of polymers and stuff, so they kind of just went that way.
Matt Curtis:
I heard that the quality of the rubber was so high that it just didn’t make sense to always use it for tires. So they also use it for medical equipment and golf balls. I think though, golfing is more of a branding than anything else. Whenever I wear my Bridgestone hat, people always ask, oh, you’re a golfer? No, actually I just worked for the tire company.
Drew Slocum:
So Matt, thanks for coming on The Fire Protection Podcast today. I guess let’s–some people might know you within the fire industry, but I guess tell us anybody else who you are, where you’re working, what your history’s been and career has been.
Matt Curtis:
Yeah, well, let’s see. I started in location maybe 17, 18 years ago–in the mapping side. We helped Google switch from having MapQuest embedded in their maps to having a branded Google slicking map and doing that with Yahoo and a few others, let’s see, back in the day. Fast forward to today, third telematics company that I’ve worked for. I’ve got probably 12 years of experience there. Been with Azuga nearly four years, and about–I’m the director of partnership, so I’m always looking for complimentary solutions that can really differentiate, at the end of the day, our commodity. We sell very nice GPS and cameras, blah, blah, blah, but there’s a hundred other companies in the market.
So I’m simply looking and working with companies that take their technology, integrate it with the Azuga’s location intelligence data to make a one plus one equals something more than two. But at the end of the day, I’ve been here for four years and about two years ago, Bridgestone acquired Azuga, and it really is marrying telematics data with tire data and leveraging Bridgestone’s, couple thousand Firestone locations so we can drive our customers to get their vehicles serviced properly utilizing the data that we generate. Whether it’s the standard preventative maintenance data like odometer and diagnostic trouble codes. And the future of where we’re going is applying artificial intelligence to the data that we have on all of our customers.
So, it’s kind of an interesting topic how, when I first started in telematics, it was just a dot in the map, with this black box you can see it every couple minutes: Where’s my guy and what did he do? And oh my god, we can see that he is speeding over the speed limit. When Bob comes in, Bob’s going to get a licking. That’s really where I started, and now it’s shifted so much.
Because, if you think about it, you go back 15 years ago, recruiting and retaining employees was not a top, hot subject. But the macro factors here in the US is, our population has aged and we haven’t trained a lot of folks at the younger ages that there’s a path that’s not called college to go. Here’s another career path where you can make really good money. We kind of suck at that from the states. So, telematics is meant to evolve.
Drew Slocum:
Yeah, there’s obviously a big technician drought out there, and I think obviously some of your technology has kind of done that. So I guess what’s the history of telematics and where was that 10 years–it was a dot on a map, right? And where did it start accelerating into kind of where it is today?
Matt Curtis:
I could probably talk for about that for an hour, but I’ll keep it super simple. The changes in demographics have affected how GPS can be used from a “spy on your guy” to a, “Hey, good job, you did awesome. Thank you so much. Please don’t leave me for my competitor.” I think there’s a little bit of that.
Commercial insurance has definitely driven it over the last 12 years, now. The industry overall has lost money. There’s just–insurance premiums go up, costs go up even faster. So that has really been a driving force for safety programs and for telematics. Most of the commercial insurers have some sort of program of: you are going to use the system and you are going to monitor how your employees drive and if they don’t meet bare minimum performance, we’re going to drop your policy. And then what do you do? You can’t operate a business without commercial insurance, so that’s been one of the bigger drivers of it…you get lawsuits.
Drew Slocum:
Yeah, I see that a lot, even when technicians or fitters or whoever are checking in on our solution. A lot of times before they even start their job, they have to do a safety checklist, so that goes properly back to the commercial insurers on top of the vehicle side, where if they’re not doing this and documenting it and archiving it, their premiums are going to go sky high. You know?
Matt Curtis:
Yeah, I definitely put that in the category of the preventative maintenance. So I look at it, before you start driving and then while you’re driving. Before you’re driving, that’s more of the responsibility of the business to make sure that the oil changes were done, the tires were rotated and brakes were inspected, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
As we do all those things, you’re much less likely to have an accident on the road, or the truck starts when the technician starts his day. And then there’s what the technician is responsible for. You’d be amazed at how many of the best technicians are the worst drivers, and it’s evidenced by seatbelt utilization. The correlation, I’m actually starting to write an article about this, the correlation between best tech and worst driver. It’s real.
Drew Slocum:
Really? That’s interesting.
Matt Curtis:
Yeah, I think it’s the more focused on the hubris. I think they just know they kick ass at their job. I’m great at my job, I’m the best salesperson, the best tech–the best. The people that have that thought process also think that they’re the best driver and that nothing’s going to happen to them.
Drew Slocum:
Yeah, I could see that. You’ve made a comment before about liking the fire protection industry.
Matt Curtis:
Oh, I love it. Yeah.
Drew Slocum:
Explain that. I remember you mentioned that to me a couple years ago.
Matt Curtis:
Yeah, I think NAFED is what sucked me into it. Going and attending, watching some of the seminars, listening to the–it’s the people and the business model, those two things. The people are awesome, they’re nice, they’re smart, they’re kind, and this is compared to industries. I’m not going to say any other industries. I deal with a lot of industries, but this one in particular–that, and I love the business model. There’s so much commercial business that is regulated such that I don’t care how good or bad the economy is doing, you’re going to have business. Because here in the states, we have regulations to make sure that things are running smoothly, and if there isn’t, there is a catastrophe. Not everyone’s going to die in the building.
So long story short, if I was going to start a business and I had the acumen for it, which I do not, I would love to start a local fire protection company. Again, I have no skills or capabilities, but having attended numerous events, dealt with so many customers and prospects in this space, they’re kind of my favorite. Just the people I get to deal with.
Drew Slocum:
Well, a lot of your technology too is very beneficial to the industry, too. It’s very compliance heavy, and if you can prove that you were there, you can tag that. You can–I think that goes, if there’s a worst case scenario, you have evidence of that, and I think that’s big.
Matt Curtis:
Yeah, that’s right. Because in your business you have to have those photos, you have to have that proof of service and et cetera. And in our business, it works like this. A company is driving, when Bob, the technician’s driving down the road in this beautifully wrapped truck, it screams, I definitively have commercial auto insurance. And even, it’s not me, Bob, the driver, it’s some other rich person over there. So there’s all kinds of accidents that are caused just for the purpose of a lawsuit to make money.
And I’ve heard this 50 times in a row that, if my business is in an accident and I go to court, I’m guilty until proven innocent. And the only way to prove innocence, it’s not GPS data. GPS data for all intents and purposes, isn’t that helpful to mitigate an accident. It’s the video evidence, it’s the safety cameras that are continuously recording what actually happened. And most of the time it’s not the fault of the commercial driver. We did this, a very extensive study with one of our commercial insurance partners, and it came out to 70, or I think 71% of the time, the accident was not the fault of the technician. But if you don’t have evidence, it’s always your fault. So I think that’s probably a correlation. That, and avoid the accident in the first place.
Drew Slocum:
Yeah, exactly right. Avoid it in the first place if you can.
There was one of the Facebook groups or social groups or whatever, a bunch of technicians were just chiming in on it, right? On fleet management, just being tracked and all that, and a couple of them piped up where they were glad they had the external cameras on the vehicle because it was the camera’s word versus their word, right?
Now, all the proof is right there. It was not even close to their fault. So it’s this big burden. You’re driving around in this pretty expensive truck that, like you said, it’s a target sometimes. Now, if you have that there–you have those cameras there–then you can worry less if you’re the driver of somebody slamming into you or whatever.
Matt Curtis
If it wasn’t your fault, you want the camera. If it was your fault, the camera really isn’t going to hurt. The insurance agencies, their number one concern typically is settling the lawsuit quickly. They want to know, “Hey, if it’s your fault, thank you for letting us know. We are not going to waste any of our precious resources. We’re just going to settle and we know why we’re settling.” So it just protects the technician from getting a point on his record. If it’s not your fault, the business is going to take the financial hit most likely. Although there are instances of employees driving vehicles being personally responsible for lawsuits, specifically in California. So it can be a little dicey.
Drew Slocum:
Yeah, that’s interesting. So I guess the history of it, right? Dotting the map. Where kind of are we now? What does technology look like now for fleet management, and what you guys are doing at Azuga?
Matt Curtis:
Without going into–well, I don’t want to sell Azuga. That’s just not fun for me. But the market overall has become very, very sophisticated. It went from dots on a map to integration with a fuel card. So now you can marry up fuel purchases with your telematics tool to minimize theft. Then, it started feeding into these fleet management systems that would manage all the aspects of preventative maintenance to make sure you’re planning and scheduling, have evidence and tying invoices, and then scheduling and sending to service centers and tying invoices with third parties.
And now it’s getting into the, like I mentioned earlier, into the commercial insurance space. So the telematics is affecting, in a positive way, the insurance premiums of companies. Because, like I mentioned, the insurance industry is a net losing money, but the program–the companies that have more sophisticated programs with telematics or cameras or both, those are actually showing profitability. So that’s a good sign.
Drew Slocum:
That is a good sign.
Matt Curtis:
Safety cameras have probably been the biggest game changer over the last four or five years that went from near nothing. The quality was low, the fixed cost was high, and that’s all shifted. It’s kind of like a flat screen television from a decade ago: big, heavy, bulky, expensive. Now, they’re almost free, you know? The camera systems are kind of coming closer to that. Bandwidth is cheaper, storage is cheaper. The AI processors don’t require too many resources on the edge. So just really good. No good excuse not to have a safety camera in the vehicle. Again, not an Azuga thing–this is an industry thing.
Drew Slocum:
How does the AI–because I know, in fire protection, it’s actually come a long way over the last five years or so as well. On the fire detection, on cameras detecting a fire so they can–and it keeps getting better. So does it work in a similar way? Is it all visual-camera based? Versus…yeah, how does that work?
Matt Curtis:
Yeah, it’s kind of interesting. I did leave the location industry for exactly two years, and I worked for an AI company and learned quite a bit about visual edge detection. But the same difference on the actual camera units. It has edge detection and it’s looking for things. The primary ones, like I mentioned, seatbelt utilization, fatigue, distracted driving–meaning the eyes are not looking forward. Mobile phone–that’s probably the number one we all know, use a cell phone and you’re distracted. It’s going to be a cause of accidents. So it’s looking for those things in real time, and the better systems will actually give an alert to the driver, “You’re doing this, stop doing that.”
So yeah, I’ll give you a specific use case. Alright, you’re driving down the road. Bob picks up the phone, he’s talking on the phone, the camera gives him a beep, and that’s a corrective action. So if he stops using the phone, no harm, no foul. If he continues doing that, a few seconds later, he gives him three beeps, sends it to the cloud as an alert for the manager to have some notification.
So everyone’s going to be–no one’s a perfect driver. Your customers are not hiring drivers. They’re hiring technicians that have to, the evil part of their job is having to drive for two or three hours a day. So, you have to take that into consideration. But there is, to the point where is the juice worth the squeeze with Bob, if Bob is driving like a maniac and just not following any of the rules you’ve got. You should have a policy in place about: you need to wear your seatbelt, you need to keep looking forward. I mean, this is basic stuff. No smoking. That’s another one. We still find our customers have drivers smoking in the vehicle. Kind of gross.
Drew Slocum:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not theirs, right?
Matt Curtis:
But hey, long story short, it’s all done on the edge.
Drew Slocum:
Is there any–you mentioned there’s the different technologies…
Matt Curtis:
The other, the other big change–I said there’s one thing that I’ve always been passionate about is how you implement the system. And the old school way was, “Hey, I’m tracking my truck, and if you do something bad, there’s going to be consequences.” Nowadays, we found it’s way better to offer a carrot versus a stick. Which is, “Thank you for your service. The work you do on jobs are fantastic. But the biggest risk to our business is our vehicles getting into an accident and, God forbid, you getting hurt. But just the vehicle getting in an accident means now we have one less truck on the road. We’re making less money. It’s a bigger burden on the business, so please drive our vehicles responsibly. We’re monitoring all these things that you’re doing, and we want to incent you to treat this vehicle more like it’s yours than it is ours.”
Because let’s call a spade a spade. Bob the tech doesn’t care what your fuel bill is. He doesn’t even know what your insurance premium is. His concern isn’t, “Am I getting the most utilization out of this vehicle?” But if you pay him to drive the vehicle responsibly, not harsh braking, not breaking the speed limit, things of that ilk, not idling the vehicle for an hour a day. All of a sudden, your interests are aligned. But why would Bob do that? Well, if Bob gets 20 bucks at the end of the month for raising his driver score, and at the end of the year the best driver gets a thousand dollars, I mean name, whatever reward system you want, the ROI is fantastic. You spend a dollar, you’re giving it to your employees and not 76 station, or Bridgestone for tires, you’re going to save a lot more than that.
You’re going to have more uptime. You’re going to have less accidents. Your premiums aren’t going to go up. You’re going to spend less money getting that vehicle serviced. You know. A used and abused vehicle goes through brakes and tires and struts and all those things exponentially–not exponentially–a lot faster. So treat it like it’s your vehicle, Bob, and we all win.
That is a big change from years ago. There was no alignment whatsoever on all the expenses and risks and liabilities of a business. So I will say that the founder of Azuga did kind of start that. I will give a nod to Ronnie, credit for that from 13 years ago. He recognized the changes in the market and it was all about what’s good for the business is good for your drivers and built a reward system. So I do have to give a nod to that, little nod to the hat for that one.
Drew Slocum:
Yeah, I mean, you put a contest out there. We just did one internally at our company. And I hate to know I’m a co-founder and all that. I still want to win our own contest. So I’m buying for…and it’s nothing crazy. It’s like pointing out deficiencies or grabbing extinguisher tags out there. So it was an interesting contest and it kind of, you know, incentivizes. I think the winner gets a couple hundred bucks, but it kind of puts it in perspective. That’s a little different, obviously, there’s a really direct correlation to safety and insurance costs, but making it a game, gamifying it. Obviously, that’s the trend and I think anybody’s into it.
Matt Curtis:
Yeah, it creates awareness. It creates consciousness every day. So we have 13,000 customers. Not all of them use this. I’d say a minority of them have a direct incentive program. They’re sharing–they’re allowing every driver to see their score every day and see how they compare. So, long story short, the ones that do that, see a significant drop in those accidents. The ones that don’t, well, just using it for operational efficiency, that’s great, but if you’re not using it to create a safety culture, you’re just missing out on an opportunity.
Drew Slocum:
Yeah. Funny random story just popped into my head. I’m just going to toss it out there. So, one of our large clients–and this goes all the way up to the CEO. I think it’s a rule, it–maybe it’s an unwritten rule–but anytime you park your car, whether it’s personal or whatever, you’d have to back in. And I never knew this, and there’s obviously, you probably know the statistics out there…
Matt Curtis:
I learned all this two years ago when we built this functionality and I said, why? And then I did a dive and an hour later. I’m like, “Oh, that makes total sense.”
Drew Slocum:
It makes total sense.
Matt Curtis:
30% of all accidents happen in parking lots.
Drew Slocum:
Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, back parking it in, so you have easy access in, and obviously visibility out. And it’s funny if I hear stories where they go to the corporate office, if somebody parks in frontward, somebody’s getting talked to–at the corporate level, not technicians or anything.
Matt Curtis:
I would put that in the top five functionalities that we have that no one uses because great, we have a backup detection report. If you don’t have a policy in place at the company level, it’s an irrelevant–it’s like a fuel card report. If you don’t have fuel cards, the report is meaningless. So I’ll put that on my list of things to kind of raise awareness of. Because you’re right–it’s the low hanging fruit. And I actually went through a month of doing that and I kind of just stopped doing it to be honest with you. But for a month, I’m sitting there, every time I go to a parking lot, my wife says, “What are you doing?” I’m like, just trust me.
So I got into this process. You don’t see well run businesses…you see the commercial trucks backed up. It makes total sense. Shame on me for not doing that anymore because it really does…the statistics are there. We’re talking fender benders, but still, that’s what screws up your business when you got to take the vehicle off the road for a day to go get it fixed.
Drew Slocum:
Well, even personally, you get a fender bender. That’s not fun for you either.
Matt Curtis:
I really want to tell you what my wife did last week, but we’re not going to do that. Oh, we’ll be buffing my car later today.
Drew Slocum:
Yeah, that’s funny. Any highlight stories from the fire protection industry that utilize, obviously fleet management software? And I know obviously a lot of companies are using it now, even down to the small scale, but any big success stories out there?
Matt Curtis:
I won’t name specific companies. You’ll probably recognize some of them, but I have heard numerous anecdotal stories just about seeing a reduction in accidents. I mean, there’s so many benefits to having a system. Again, not Azuga, everyone, there’s a hundred companies out there who can give you a good portion of what we do. I don’t like commercials, but having any system in place is better than nothing.
But the stories that I hear are when the GPS system will tie into the other disparate fleet-related solutions, whether it’s the fuel cards, third party maintenance software like a Fleetio or one of the other companies that does maintenance management, motor vehicle records companies. What are some of the other integrations we see? Obviously scheduling…
Drew Slocum:
Field service management?
Matt Curtis:
Yeah, I mean, again, I like staying away from specifics, but when you can have the system you’re using to run your business tie in with the data that you’re using to manage your fleet and put it all into a single pane of glass…and make better decisions and have better visibility. Knowing where your techs were doesn’t do a lot of good unless you have relation to where they should be, whether it’s their homes or the jobs or the head office or the parts stores, things of that nature. But you can see them all in one place, just makes your life easier. It’s just a level of automation that just cuts down the manual.
Like a fuel card is a good example: You got all these expenses, you know where the trucks were, but if they’re not married together, they don’t do you very much good. You want to know that that vehicle was at that location and the right amount of gallons of fuel were put in that vehicle. And this correlation is across the board, inside the fleet industry of disparate systems talking to each and just making life a little bit easier. So I do hear stories about our customers using two or three integrations, and that makes me happy.
Anytime a customer is using one or more integrations, they’re a happier customer, they’re getting more value from our system, and they’re not going to leave us when the contract comes up and they’re chasing some cheap fly by night GPS company. I see these ones pop up at 9.99 and run for the hills.
You don’t buy a Honda Civic to run your business, you get the F-150. It’s got to be the right tool for the job.
Drew Slocum:
Sure, sure. How is technology–I don’t know if it’s fully there yet, and this maybe gets into the future talk of traffic and the metro areas where you have three stops in a day or more, and how to optimize that.
What’s out there? Is that happening faster? I know you obviously have a lot of–Google’s got a lot of analytics…
Matt Curtis:
Personally, I think that’s been baked for a long time. I mean, past companies–I used to work for Navtech, which was acquired by Nokia, which is now Here Technologies. I worked for TomTom, Telematics, which was owned by TomTom Licensing, which is used by companies like Apple. I’ve worked within this space for a long time. I think the real time and the predictive/historic traffic data, whether it’s coming from Google or Here or Inrix, I think it’s all fantastic. So, if you know that you’ve got to do these jobs at a certain day and time, the data is there to take into account what the likelihood, with high confidence, of how much traffic is there going to be. You can’t predict incidents, but you can predict flow very, very accurately.
Drew Slocum:
Sure, sure. Yeah, especially around the metro areas. I know that’s always a big question when they’re like, “Hey, what are you guys doing with route optimization?” And obviously we have some tools within our map and all that and dispatching. That’s been a huge improvement over the last 18 months, even the last six months. Some really cool stuff.
But it’s like, well, how do we get better at it? And I think that’s probably the next step, at least in field service, is getting some of the route optimization in there. The thing is, in fire, some jobs you might be only be doing one or two in a day, so it might not matter. But if you’re doing 10, that’s a different…we’re not UPS drivers out here in fire protection, but if you’re doing fire extinguishers, you’re doing a lot in a day.
Matt Curtis:
If I could get a dollar for every time I’ve had a services company ask about route optimization or a software partner of mine, ask about it, I would be a rich, rich man. I’ve had this conversation a bazillion times. At the end of the day, it comes down to, the juice doesn’t become worth the squeeze because you’re not a delivery business. All you were doing is making stops all day long, and every time you save them a couple minutes, that’s where it makes sense.
But when you’re talking about technicians stopping at two or three locations a day, and there’s typically flexibility, too, right? You have an appointment between one and two. Does the customer really care if you get there between one and two? Oftentimes, no. So it’s open business hours. I’m going there to do a job.
So until the technology is near free, because it’s not cheap to implement route optimization technology and the data that drives it. I have not seen a single field service management software company successfully implement a route optimization tool. So yeah, I welcome you to take on the challenge, but it’s a big hairy one and they aren’t willing to pay money for it.
Drew Slocum:
Yeah, they’re not willing to pay money. And at the end of the day, if they’re at the end of the next stop, you’ve got three routes to the next location. Pick the best one. I don’t know. I think there’s, again, the market keeps asking for it, but maybe they don’t know the cost of it currently. But again, maybe the cost comes down at some point, but I don’t think anytime soon. Right?
Matt Curtis:
Yeah, there’s the cost to license it, and there’s the cost to implement it. And then what’s the willingness of your customer to take that on as an additional experience? It’ll get there eventually, it just hasn’t happened yet.
Drew Slocum:
Any other cool, innovative ideas? I know you have a lot of AI going on. We’re doing that within the canvases or anything. Anything else going on that’s kind of a year or two away?
Matt Curtis:
What I’m seeing here, working with a couple software partners are AI inside of predictive maintenance, and I found that kind of interesting. The use case was something along of–we have all this data that’s being collected. So obviously, machine models are created from a lot of data and there’s a lot of data collected from these software solutions that are used by repair shops.
Think of your Jiffy Lube, your Les Schwab, your Firestone locations, all these locations. They’re collecting all this data. Vehicle comes in, they know the year, the make, the model, the mileage on that vehicle, what the repair was, what the cost was, what parts were used, when it was repaired, where it was repaired. Now they’re starting to be able to predict, with some eerie accuracy, future failures. So the example that we’ve been using is a delivery company in Phoenix, Arizona. They have a mix of vehicles–to makes, years, models of how old they are, et cetera. And they know that historical data has said that in the month of July when it’s 110, then certain, like say an O2 sensor has a high likelihood of failing.
So, rather than wait for the vehicle to break down on the side of the road in a hundred degree weather, why don’t you schedule a relatively low-cost service for a sensor that hasn’t broken yet. But if you can just spend a low amount of money at your convenience to repair that, the chances of it breaking down go to zero for that specific sensor.
So, it’s driven both by the machine models from the data, the aggregate data. And I’ve got another partner that’s actually working on listening to the 100+ signals that are generated every second on a vehicle from the ECU, the electronic control module. They’re listening for signals to identify predictive failures as well. So it’s like two different ways. There’s the macro level for the data that’s being collected throughout the entire market that’s stored in these ERP systems, and then there’s literally listening to the vehicle data.
So I don’t know if they’re going to be competing models or if they all merge into one, but I find that really cool. How nice would it be to almost never have an unpredicted failure of your vehicle? What’s going to happen? You fix it and you’re not getting into–Bob doesn’t get in the truck and ah, shit, it’s not starting right now. And we’re doing the same thing with tires, too. Who wants to get into a vehicle where the tire is low? We can do predictive models on slow leaks, on wear and tear, that will reduce the likelihood of an accident. So, I find that stuff pretty cool.
Drew Slocum:
Yeah, and we’re actually, in the fire industry, we’re doing that now too. Looking at predictive analysis of when building systems are going to, certain pieces are going to fail. We need better sensors and more data. But we’re grabbing a lot of data now because we’re doing so many inspections.
But I think the sensors that the IoT technology, and–it’s already on vehicles that they’re grabbing a lot of data currently. So, it’s just putting that all together in data models, right?
Matt Curtis:
I mean, that’s exactly what a TPMS system is–tire pressure management. When you get into that vehicle, it tells you when it’s low. So every vehicle has that data by, it’s mandated by law to collect that data. But if it just sits there…
Drew Slocum:
I didn’t know it was mandated by law?
Matt Curtis:
Yeah, yeah. I learned that a few months ago too. I went to a tire factory and learned all kinds of things about tires and didn’t realize the sophistication that’s involved in these tires. You wouldn’t think…but it was kind of interesting. All that data is locked in there, but there are certain unnamed telematics providers that are owned by tire companies. We’re pulling all that data out of all of our customer’s vehicles and analyzing it and developing models where you can predict, you can see when it’s a tire that’s going to fail. God, it’s really interesting data.
They’re pulling entire–it’s not just the pressure on the tire, but it’s the weather, the external weather. So you apply weather, speed, vibrations, and things like that. You can predict and extend the life of your tires because, as I’ve learned over the last few months, under and overinflated tires, obviously you get worse gas mileage, but you have a 300% chance increase in accidents when those tires are under or overinflated because they don’t stop as well, and they don’t take turns as well. So I’d never thought about that. I had to sit down with the tire folks and they had to “edumucate” me. So again, some of this is going into AI to actually look at all this mass amount of data and see these signals and start making predictions.
My knowledge is a little bit short on the tire side. I’ve been working very closely with some of these predictive maintenance providers, so sure. Maybe next time we talk I’ll be become a subject matter expert.
Drew Slocum:
Yeah, we’ll talk again soon, I’m sure. I guess, final kind of thought, what is happening in the commercial, just commercial field service space for electrification of vehicles? Have you been seeing a lot of electric cars, kind of, in fleet style, or is that not there yet? Is that ever going to be a thing?
Matt Curtis:
I’m sure it will be. I just haven’t seen it. I think it’s much more relevant in the consumer space. I think it’s both the cost, the risk, the fact that our customers are typically on the road, how many hours a day? It’s a hell of a lot easier to go get relatively cheap gas than it is to…I mean, look, I’m sorry. I live in California. Our gas is still pretty darn cheap. Go anywhere else in the world and go buy fuel and then compare it to what you spent here in the US. I really haven’t seen it being a cost factor.
The vehicles are out there. We can actually bring in that data. You know, the GPS units that are typically installed in the vehicles, those aren’t even needed for newer vehicles, whether they’re electric or ICE, we can tap directly into the telematics system from a Ford or GM or a Stellantis. So, I don’t think there’s any limitations on companies. It’s not as if they’re going to lose features or functions if they got an electric vehicle versus a standard ICE vehicle for their GPS systems, but I’m sure it’s coming. But I think this is the geography of our country.
Well, it’s just the geography they cover as well. I mean, go ask your customers, how many miles are you willing to drive out to go visit a customer? They’re probably willing to go a decent distance, and depending on an ICE vehicle–an electric vehicle, at the end of a long day to go make that trek and then be able to come back, they may just not be able to make the trip.
Drew Slocum:
Yeah, I don’t know if the vehicles are there yet. The industries are in sprinter vans or things like that. I think they’re being electrified, and I don’t think they’re going, they’re not driving more than, you know, what a Tesla battery does. They’re not driving more than 350 probably on average. And if the safety’s up there, I don’t know. I think there’s something there. It’s just that there’s no availability for…and the infrastructure’s not there for charging stations yet.
Matt Curtis:
It may be illogical, it may be, what do they call that? Range anxiety, that isn’t even a true issue for them, I don’t think.
Drew Slocum:
Yeah, it’s definitely there. For certain cases. I think it’s more, there’s no vehicles that are being made for it yet. So it’s a chicken and the egg thing, right?
Matt Curtis:
Yes. I think you’re right. If you want your consumer Toyota to be a hybrid, no problem. Although I’ve heard some really good things about that. And the Ford Mavericks, the Ford Rangers, I’ve seen those more on the road with a commercial sticker on the side of them. That’s really anecdotal. I think I just want one, they look really cute. They’re low cost, they’re Fords. I bet you’re going to see more of those hybrid vehicles.
I think that’s where Toyota has been super successful. They didn’t go electric, they went hybrid, and we all, it’s not a very controversial thing, you’re going to get best of both worlds. I think, if my wife lets me, the next car I’ll get is that Ford Ranger. I don’t need it, so I have to sell her on it, but it’s damn cute.
Drew Slocum:
Yeah, I’m probably in the Tesla market, I think, and a lot of it’s the safety, honestly, that was the biggest thing. It’s the safety of driving with the cameras, so it’s just much higher.
Matt Curtis:
Well, if you need a camera for your current vehicle, let me know. I’ll ship you out.
Drew Slocum:
Yeah, and I may take you up on that.
Matt Curtis:
Two minutes to install, so it’ll be pretty easy.
Drew Slocum:
Where can everybody find you online and all that stuff on Azuga?
Matt Curtis:
Oh, I’m on LinkedIn, like everyone else. And my email address is mattc@azuga.com. I can’t be that hard to find.
Drew Slocum:
No, this has been, yeah. Yeah, this has been great, Matt. I think there’s obviously a lot of great stuff happening in the space and partnerships is kind of–blending software is kind where it’s at these days, and taking that data and that technology. Having one kind of hub for that is kind of where the market is wanting to be.
Matt Curtis:
My goal is for our customers to get a lot of value out of a system, but they don’t have to sit there in front of their computer for too long. So anything you can do to automate, reduce steps, a win for everyone. Thank you so much for the time. It was fun talking with you.
Drew Slocum:
Yeah, this has been great. Yeah. Yeah. I want to do this again soon. Maybe in six months or a year, once some new technology comes out.
Matt Curtis:
Good. I’ll have new things to talk about then. All right.
Drew Slocum:
Thanks again, Matt.
This has been Episode 66 of The Fire Protection Podcast, powered by Inspect Point. Want to thank Matt Curtis again from Azuga for coming on the podcast today to discuss everything fleet management. There’s some really fun stuff that they’re doing and actually Inspect Point’’s going to be doing here really soon. So stay tuned and we’ll see you again next time. Thanks.
