"You can observe a lot just by watching."

Or so, it is claimed, said sports great Yogi Berra. Just a few minutes ago I took the short walk to my mailbox ... on the way I passed a house under construction and there were guys from the cable TV/Internet supplier in our community. I won't call them by name, they're that outfit with a name though that has an 'a' at both ends.

There were three vans and three workers present. Normally it takes only one guy to do the installs but, not being a cable guy, I'll make a guess that three were needed. What caught my attention though, was one of the vans just sitting there idling for no apparent reason. I continued on to the mailbox, got SatViz's mail, stopped to watch an irrigation guy installing sprinkler pipe, and fully 15 minutes later walked back past the A------a vans. Yep, you guessed it, the idling van was still running. By now a guy was sitting in the driver's seat, not driving, just watching the other two installers.

This isn't really note-worthy, I see this kind of wasted time and fuel loss everyday. What is note-worthy, though is the fact that the owners of these fleets just don't care. The company in question has the 20th largest fleet in North America .. more than 8,000 vehicles. If they all idle for not profit 15 minutes a day, that's an hour and 15 minutes per week... 8,000 trucks, time 1.25 hours times 50 weeks times (let's say $2.50 a gallon for gas), that's $1,250,000.00 going out the tailpipe for no purpose at all, just polluting our neighborhoods.

This is a company that's had untold profitability challenges, cries poor mouth often, and seems to be one of the 'sick puppies' of the communication industry. One just has to wonder just how an extra one and a quarter million in pure profit would help them in the profitability trek? Not to mention the labor cost they might recover if they tracked how often all these guys were meeting up and sitting around watching their workers watch each other work. They claim. GPS tracking of their vehicles doesn't make business sense. Do you think the same as they do? Are you sure?

One other thing Yogi is alleged to have said is: "You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there." Is your route planned out?

Dave
www.satviz.com