With increasing penetration of e-commerce across urban markets, the number of last mile deliveries and delivery fleets have increased exponentially over the last 5 years.

Nearly 1.5–2.5 million Light Commercial vehicles are sold each year in the EU and UK (according to Statista). Despite a dip in sales in 2020 due to the pandemic, ecommerce powered deliveries have fuelled demand for commercial vans during this period.

Ford dominates the EU+UK market with its Transit model while Renault tops the French market with Kangoo, Master and Trafic. Volkswagen Transporter and Caddy and the ubiquitous Mercedes Benz Sprinter vans lead in German market.

The Achilles heel for fleet managers

Commercial fleet vehicles change hands (drivers) fairly often, sometimes upto 2–3 times a day depending on shift patterns. And last mile logistics companies also rent/lease vehicles for short durations (weeks) to cater to demand spikes in certain months.

All of this makes vehicle condition monitoring as massive challenge and given how damage prone these types of vehicles are, fleet managers end up with a huge repair bill at the end of the month.

1. Fleet managers have to rely on drivers to fill checklists, identify damages caused by them — which is inefficient and mostly inaccurate
2. Even if damages are recorded digitally, there is no easy way to identify which one is a “new” damage and which was “pre-existing” at each handover
3. Disputes with rental firms on vehicle condition at handover to add to the fleet manager’s woes

Possible Solutions

What if drivers could just take 4–6 images of the van with their smartphone at the time of handover and an app did the rest?

What if the driver walked around the van and took a 45–60 second video with a smartphone and an app did the rest?

What if the app automatically identified and recorded damages on the van at the time of handover based on these images? And compared the condition between two handovers and identified all “new” damages?

Fleet manager’s delight — ClearQuote app

ClearQuote app can be used to inspect fleet vehicles in the most efficient way possible. Scan the license plate of the van to retrieve vehicle details and start the inspection in two simple steps

1. A guided image capture process so drivers can capture the right type and number of images during the inspection.

2. There is an optional configurable checklist which can be filled if required

The outcome

Once the images are uploaded, they are analysed by ClearQuote AI specifically developed for identifying 100+ parts of commercial vans and also identify damages on them. All major European van models are covered.

Even minor damages such as scratches and dents get automatically marked on these images thereby providing complete transparency on vehicle condition.

That’s not all.

When a driver/renter returns the vehicle, a similar inspection can be done after which ClearQuote app automatically determines if there are any “new” damages on the vehicle.

If there are standard repair and repaint charges agreed with repairshops, fleet managers can set up their pricing in ClearQuote database and even generate a repair estimate automatically without having to ask the repairshop.

How does ClearQuote app fit into existing systems?

ClearQuote app is available on the Playstore and Appstore for Android phone and iPhone/iPad users respectively and can be customized in a white-label format. There is a web dashboard for fleet managers to view inspection reports and track vehicle history — all in one place.

For fleet managers who already use fleet management solutions like Fleetio, Geotab, etc. ClearQuote provides APIs and supports integrations with these platforms. So all new issues can be fed automatically into your existing system/workflow.