For City of Darwin, Fleetwise was the difference between a slow, manual fleet management process and an automated system
City of Darwin needed a better way to manage its fleet vehicles. With Fleetwise, it turned a slow, clunky manual process into a smooth, smart online system, complete with an automated KeyBank. Now, the council can monitor usage and manage vehicles more efficiently, without the time investment.
City of Darwin is a local government area in Australia’s Northern Territory, covering roughly 100km2 with 80,000 residents. Despite being a relatively small city, the council has a sizeable fleet of vehicles to manage – 60 trucks, 60 light vehicles and various smaller vehicles and trailers.
The city’s manual, spreadsheet-based booking system was time-consuming and inefficient, with keys going missing, vehicles overbooked, and no way to track fleet usage with any level of accuracy. With support from Fleetwise, Fleet and Equipment Manager Jack Wickham and his team shifted to an online system, with an automated KeyBank and reporting functions.
That one simple change has helped the city save significant time, reduce waste, and gain visibility of its fleet.
Manual management for a significant fleet
Fleet and Equipment Manager Jack Wickham’s team manage a fleet of around 130 vehicles across three main council sites. A portion of vehicles are pooled, which means staff need to book and borrow them as needed.
In the past, different sites used a range of manual systems to manage the process. At one site, staff members could book through a spreadsheet and then grab the keys from behind the desk. At the others, they needed to contact the admin team and then retrieve the keys from the front desk. Both systems were time-consuming, with no way to track the comings and goings of keys or vehicles.
Jack explains: “You booked through Outlook, and you grabbed keys hanging on a wall. It worked, but it was very difficult to get any meaningful information about utilisation.”
Not only that, but the open key system meant keys weren’t always returned on time – people would forget to return them, which caused problems for the next booking and added to admin time.
It was clear that the council needed a new system.
“We were looking for a digital solution for our pool vehicles,” says Jack. “If you don't have this kind of mechanism, it becomes much less efficient, and you end up having a lot more vehicles than you otherwise need.”
Finding time and efficiency with Fleetwise
City of Darwin came to Fleetwise through a recommendation from another provider. The Fleetwise team implemented a web-based system for bookings, reporting tools for Jack and his team, and a connected KeyBank to manage keys.
Now, council staff book a vehicle through the web portal, and then receive a code for the digital KeyBank. It gives operations, admin and fleet management teams much more detail about vehicle movement and availability.
“From an operator’s perspective, it’s a huge quality-of-life improvement, because they’ve got much more information,” explains Jack. “It’s much easier for them to book in their own time at their own workstation, and they can do the whole process themselves – booking, picking up, dropping off, whatever it is.”
For the fleet management team, it has been a game-changer. The old system gave no insight into vehicle movements or overall use. Now, the team can create reports about bookings, key retrievals and utilisation, helping them understand how and when different vehicles are being used.
“It lets us see which ones are actually getting booked the most,” says Jack. “We can look at those and go, ‘This one’s only getting booked 10% of the time.’ So that utilisation data is really good.”
More information, more insight
The council ran a short trial of the Fleetwise system at first, before deciding to take on the software permanently. According to Jack, the Fleetwise team offered accessible support throughout, helping troubleshoot issues as staff got their heads around the new software. In the end, the trial was so successful that some staff members flat-out refused to even consider going back.
Now that Fleetwise is bedded in, Jack and his team are seeing several benefits. Admin staff save significant time previously spent on manual bookings.
“The admin teams have gotten a lot of time back themselves. They only do some troubleshooting, now they don’t have to run the whole thing,” explains Jack.
They’re also noticing fewer missing keys and overbookings, which means staff members don’t have to wait when they need a vehicle. Even better, detailed reporting information flows through to Jack and his team, so they can keep track of vehicle usage over time.
“Probably the most useful report that we’ve been able to get through Fleetwise is the concurrent use report,” says Jack. “So, how many vehicles are available and how many are booked at one time? How many vehicles were booked and how many were used?”
He shares a recent example. One manager was complaining that vehicles weren’t available over a certain period. The team ran a report for the previous six months and showed that vehicles were fully booked on just six days for that period. They can also track usage across vehicle types and identify which are used most often – and which ones could potentially be culled.
The council has already reduced fleet numbers based on this data, and they’re keeping a continual eye on utilisation for the future. As Jack puts it, this means fleet optimisation can be based on data, not just guesswork.
Data-driven efficiency at City of Darwin
For City of Darwin, implementing Fleetwise has been a seamless process with significant benefits. By switching to a web-based booking system and digital key bank, the city has saved time for operational and admin teams, reduced missing keys and booking delays, and gained visibility across the pool fleet. This means issues are identified and resolved promptly, and fleet optimisation is based on data, not just guesswork.
And for operators on the ground, it’s making life easier. As Jack explains, their feedback says it best:
“There are dozens of operators that have said, ‘Yep, it’s great, we love it, we’re very grateful that it exists.’"