Burlington, N.J. — The Morris County, N.J., motor pool is using its Dossier fleet maintenance software to help county officials decide which vehicles in the county fleet to replace with less costly, more fuel efficient models. An effort approved by the county’s elected board of freeholders in October aims to reduce fuel use as well as the size and cost of vehicles.
All Morris County vehicle data is quickly retrievable from the county’s Dossier fleet maintenance system. Dossier is the leading fleet maintenance application from Arsenault Associates.
Nearly 500,000 people live in the 470 square miles of Morris County, a suburban area approximately 30 miles from New York City. To service this population, the county’s fleet of 1,000 vehicles consists of cars, pickups, buses, passenger vans, minivans, light trucks, both on-road and off-road heavy-duty trucks, and seasonal equipment such as snow blowers and riding mowers.
According to Bob Cook, motor pool supervisor for Morris County, officials needed detailed information on county vehicles, particularly the 232 cars used by employees.
“We were looking to provide the miles and the age of certain vehicles. We were able to see the percentage of 8-cylinder, 6- cylinder, and 4-cylinder vehicles. We were able to sort the type of vehicles, the miles, the years, and the departments they are used by,” Cook said.
The office of County Administrator John Bonanni and individual departments will use the information to prepare strategies for replacement vehicles. The county’s sheriff, prosecutor, park police, and jail officials, among others, will review their vehicle needs as part of the new cost reduction effort, the Star-Ledger of Newark reported.
“We were able to handle requests for information very quickly. What used to take a couple of days to pull together, we were now able to say, we’ll email it to you this afternoon,” Cook explained. “Dossier was very helpful. We were able to come up with all of the information for the county to evaluate.”
Morris County Freeholder Gene Feyl told the Star-Ledger he expected the county to save money by purchasing smaller vehicles and that those vehicles would use 25 to 30 percent less fuel.