We’re happy to introduce Mark Puglio, another FleetMatics employee guest author who won first place in our internal blog contest. Mark is one of our Business Development Managers in Clearwater, FL.
I was talking with Chris, the fleet manager of Orion Construction, an oilfield construction business in Woodward, Oklahoma, for months. He loved the FleetMatics GPS Tracking System and saw the value, but, unfortunately, the owner of the business did not. This left us in a stall pattern while waiting for the fleet manager to convince the owner he should view the product demo.
Just about the time I was ready to close this file and move on, multiple tornados moved through Oklahoma and devastated many parts of Woodward. Because I had developed somewhat of a friendship with Chris during all of our communication over the past several months, I wanted to give him a call to make sure everyone was OK and send my condolences. I made the call with some hesitation due to the severity of the tornados and destruction, but thankfully, every Orion employee had survived. However, there was much devastation throughout the town and its surrounding areas.
While on the phone, Chris explained that in the days following the tornados, Orion and Jericho Services (who happens to be an existing FleetMatics customer) had been using their trucks and equipment for to help the Red Cross with cleanup. I told him my thoughts and prayers were with them and I was about to hang up when, to my surprise, he informed me that he thought he would be able to sign up with FleetMatics shortly… I was stunned.
Chris told me that the owners of Orion and Jericho were together the morning after the storms surveying the damage with the Red Cross when Jericho’s owner got a call from one of his employees. The employee told him that multiple trucks were missing. It turned out that the storms were so violent that they had displaced and leveled many things. Jericho’s owner simply pulled up the FleetMatics app on his mobile phone and found his trucks immediately. After seeing this, the owner of Orion looked back at Chris and said, “Is this what you have been trying to show me? We need this!”
The rest is history. About two weeks later, we brought Orion Construction into the FleetMatics family. My intention in writing this blog is to hopefully express how something good came out of a bad and very unfortunate situation, and how FleetMatics was able to help. Also, hopefully business owners will understand that GPS tracking is an industry norm these days. Whether you have 5 trucks or 500, don’t wait until something tragic happens to implement a solution. It will most likely become one of the most business important tools you have.
