Wheels Review: Is it the Right Fleet Management System for You?

Founded in 1939, Wheels was one of the first fleet management systems in the United States. Today it is still going strong, offering a sprawling range of services and software to US fleet businesses.

We’ve reviewed its core fleet management tools in this Wheels review, including its vehicle tracking, financial management and reporting features. If you’re looking for GPS fleet tracking software, we’ve compiled a list of the best providers, but to learn more about Wheels read on below.

Wheels Review: Features

For over 75 years, Wheels Fleet Management has been a service-oriented company. That ethos is reflected in the company’s offerings, which are based less on specific products than on the services they offer.

Wheels assist with regulatory and compliance issues, upfitting, remarketing, telematics, acquisitions and fulfillment, and inventory management. It also has software to support all of this, and there are plenty of appealing features that fleet managers can utilize to improve fleet efficiency. Here are a few that we picked out:

Vehicle tracking and map interface

Like most fleet management software, Wheels has a map interface view inside its FleetView platform‘s telematics section to track vehicles. Here you can monitor the real-time location of all vehicles added to the platform, as well as the status of vehicles including current speed, idle time, and route adherence.

You can also set up geofences to alert when vehicles enter or leave designated zones to help manage driver compliance and optimize routes as appropriate.

Reporting, analytics and alerts

There are plenty of appealing reporting features within Wheels’ FleetView Analytics Portal for users to get a closer look at their vehicle and driver data. It acts as a centralized platform for accessing your fleet data.

For starters, you can customize dashboards to display the metrics most relevant to your fleet operations. All graphics use up-to-the-minute data and come in a variety of forms including charts, graphs, and tables, which can be dragged and dropped across the dashboard interface.

You can also create reports, including over 75 on-demand reports. It is very easy to do for any set of available metrics using the Custom Query Tool, which helps users build custom queries by selecting specific parameters like vehicle type, region, maintenance history, and driver behavior. You can filter exactly the data you want, save frequently used queries, automate report generation, and export results in various formats for further analysis such as CSV, PDF, or Excel.

The types of reports you can create include:

• Cost reports where you can analyze your business spending on maintenance, fuel, and other operational expenses.
• Driver performance reports to monitor safety, compliance, and general behavior.
• Vehicle fleet data around vehicle usage like idle time and mileage.
• Environmental impact tracking of CO2 emissions and sustainability efforts.

So you can keep tabs on your fleet without needing to create reports multiple times per day, you can also set over 50 configurable alerts to monitor fleet performance, driver behavior, and compliance, delivered directly to stakeholders.

Financial management

Unlike some fleet management software, Wheels has fairly extensive tools to track and manage your business finances which could be helpful for larger businesses where costs need to be sent to various stakeholders and departments for payment.

You can upload and assign each expense a cost allocation code to send the cost to a specific department, cost center, project, or client. If there are repeat costs, these can be automatically allocated based on predefined criteria.

Thereafter, you can access all your financial records using the pre-built or custom reports described earlier, as well as schedule monthly or quarterly ones.

Using your historical data, Wheels can also inform your future budgeting decisions and create predictive cost modeling based on fleet business variables like mileage, fuel prices and maintenance schedules.

One of the best features is the ability to calculate the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of a vehicle through acquisition, operation, and (eventual) disposal. You can compare the TCO across different vehicle makes, models, and types and effectively manage the lifecycle of your fleet by picking the optimal time to replace your vehicle based on cost trends.

You’ll also get support for fuel taxes like International Fuel Tax Agreement (IFTA) compliance and other accounting standards such as leasing support for vehicles (e.g. ASC 842 and IFRS 16).

If you have external financial systems, you can export this financial data or utilize APIs to integrate it with relevant software.

Wheels Review: Support Options

Users benefit from 24/7 customer service with Wheels, helping you solve any problems as and when they arise.

Wheels backs its product and service suite with a Driver Service Center staffed by experienced support operators (with an average of four years tenure), to provide information 24 hours a day, all year round.

Further assistance is available via DriverView, which allows monitoring of vehicle and policy information, notifications, mileage and personal use records, and vehicle ordering/tracking. WheelsDirect allows online vehicle resale.

Wheels’ mobile app also provides several helpful tools, including a maintenance guide and real-time shop locators, ensuring that drivers stay on top of vehicle upkeep, as well as reminders for drivers for vehicle maintenance and compliance-related tasks.

Wheels Review: Pricing and Costs

Like many fleet management providers, Wheels doesn’t publicly state its prices. Instead, you need to get a custom quote for your business based on your unique needs. This will typically depend on the following factors:

• Fleet size: The number of vehicles tends to impact both software licensing fees and any necessary hardware investments, such as tracking devices or dashcams.
• Selected services: Whether you opt for basic features like vehicle acquisition and maintenance management or more advanced tools like telematics and driver behavior monitoring will change the cost of Wheels’ service.
• Hardware requirements: Depending on the type of hardware you need, there may be additional costs which vary by the quality of the equipment, alongside installation fees if required.
• Contract terms: Longer-term contracts or bundled services often offer more favorable pricing, though we can’t confirm exactly how that changes with Wheels.

Wheels Review: Wheels vs Competitors

It is difficult to compare Wheels to other providers given the sprawling nature of its business operations. Still, it’s worth looking at some of the other vehicle tracking and management software solutions on the market today. Here’s are some other top options for you to compare Wheels against:

Wheels Review: Who Is Wheels Suited To?

Given Wheels’ wide-ranging and comprehensive fleet management services, far beyond the software features outlined in this review, it could be a worthwhile addition to most fleet businesses. But this complexity of service means it is a solid choice for larger-scale fleets in particular, who might require customizable solutions and a generally more complex setup.

You’ll need to contact Wheels to get exact pricing on the services you need, as it only offers custom pricing solutions since most operations will not need every aspect of its services, which range from the acquisition of vehicles directly from Wheels to the software features we’ve outlined above.