Driving safety and productivity with data-enabled sustainable fleets

Customer stories · Feb 20, 2025

Millions of people depend on TELUS to deliver reliable, high-speed telecommunications services everyday. With approximately 2,800 service vehicles across Canada, TELUS sought a trusted and secure fleet management solution that aligned not only with its business goals, but also its ambitious sustainability goals. Discover how TELUS improves productivity, reduces fuel consumption, enhances driver safety, complies with regulations and supports important sustainability goals through data-empowered advanced fleet management technology.

The challenge

In an effort to simplify fleet management, TELUS leverages its global-leading technology to drive positive change and enable truly remarkable outcomes—however, efficiency is not the only consideration factor.

As a social capital organization,

TELUS sets ambitious sustainability goals

such as achieving net carbon-neutral operations, reducing 46% of Scope 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from business travel and employee commuting by 2030, and to have 100% of electricity requirements effectively procured from renewable or low-emitting sources by the end of 2025. To achieve these goals, TELUS needed a fleet management solution dedicated to continued delivery of high-quality, uninterrupted service to customers, while maintaining support for TELUS' many sustainability initiatives by enabling us to optimize routes, minimize idling and maximize vehicle utilization.

The solution

TELUS partnered with Geotab to utilize its innovative telematics platform, enhanced security and data-driven analytics. Geotab processes

over 80 billion data points a day

, identifying patterns in the data to help customers extract valuable insights. Through the use of accurate and comprehensive data provided by this solution, TELUS is able to validate decision-making, support compliance with government regulations and align with its overall social purpose.

We have an equally committed customer first approach. Sustainability and reliability are highly important to both organizations, and for that reason, TELUS is Geotab's number one telecommunication partner in Canada.

Jodi Baxter
Vice President of Industry Solutions – 5G and IoT Connectivity
TELUS Business

TELUS began implementing Geotab technology in 2018 and today our entire fleet runs on the platform. Telematics data helps us assess overall fuel efficiency and identify opportunities for reductions in fuel consumption and emissions.

Driving toward a greener future

Vehicles remain the number one source of carbon emissions worldwide—Idling wastes money and natural resources. Not only does idling damage vehicles, it increases operational cost and produces emissions that contribute to climate change. To support TELUS’ sustainability agenda, we use Geotab data to evaluate the effectiveness of anti-engine idling programs in our fleet.

TELUS previously adopted the use of electric power take-off (PTO) for certain models of our fleet. These motors are now powering our bucket truck hydraulic pumps used to operate the boom, eliminating the need to idle the vehicles or run gasoline-powered onboard generators. In addition to this, TELUS is also leveraging Geotab’s fleet industry trends dashboard to identify realistic idling targets by benchmarking against vehicles with similar vocation or by city size.

Furthering its promise towards sustainability, TELUS recently launched an Electric Vehicle (EV) Home Charging pilot program to mitigate infrastructure cost and complexity challenges that many organizations face by enabling employees to charge their company vehicles at home. Employees are then reimbursed for their utility usage through geofence and charging event data collected by Geotab devices and paid through the internal payroll system.

By using Geotab’s technology, TELUS is able to measure and optimize its fleet operations and reduce its environmental impact. Telematics data validates business decisions by enabling the company to understand true fuel utilization, identify under-used vehicles, and justify the transition to electric vehicles. Fuel costs alone can consume a large portion of an organization’s fleet budget. Data-driven solutions to manage fuel costs can

increase fuel efficiency by 20-40%

while positively impacting the environment.

For TELUS, monitoring and optimizing fuel consumption not only improves the bottom line, it also supports its sustainability goals. By implementing this technology, TELUS has gained insights into daily usage and costs at the vehicle level, which allows TELUS to predict mileage use and future vehicle replacement needs.

TELUS has thousands of vehicles that we have dispersed geographically around the world, and so it's critical that our partnership with Geotab helps to build the most sustainable fleet within the TELUS organization.

Jodi Baxter
Vice President of Industry Solutions – 5G and IoT Connectivity
TELUS Business

Telematics data is consistent, comprehensive and efficient, helping TELUS better understand its fleet and its usage—providing more accurate data compared to self-reported readings. Analyzing GPS data, paired with other systems and variables, has helped TELUS to better understand overall usage and identify which vehicles offer the most value across its fleet. Through this analysis, TELUS is able to identify under-utilized vehicles and right-size its fleet.

Putting safety at the forefront

Detailed end-to-end visibility and insight into incidents has been a game changer for safety. By measuring the number of speeding, seat belt and excessive idling incidents TELUS prioritizes employee and public safety, greenhouse gas emissions reduction and optimizing engine maintenance.

Awareness into various safety measures is the start to healthy, constructive conversations and driving a safety first culture. Location and trip data give management peace of mind and confirmation of activity when an employee isn’t able to promptly respond before, during, or after performing onsite work.

Hitting the ground running

Geotab’s easy platform implementation and seamless OEM integration enabled TELUS to add the technology to our vehicles and get the system up and running without pausing operations for formal training. Communications to fleet managers along with a few links to Geotab videos proved sufficient to get fleet managers and drivers using the platform quickly and easily.

Whether you're a fleet of 10 or a fleet of 1000 or more, you'll have the ability to keep using the product as you grow. You can build more technology and hardware, there's a wide variety that's compatible with Geotab, where it's basically plug and play. Plus you're able to add more filters, different groups and many customization options within the platform to adjust to your growing fleet.

Justin Quan
Fleet Business Analyst
TELUS Business

Geotab's telematics solution enabled TELUS to reach its business goals while continuing to work towards its ambitious sustainability goals. Reliable and accurate data has given TELUS visibility on true fuel economy at the vehicle level. This insight incorporates vehicle up-fitting and driving patterns and helps optimize vehicle replacement strategies. Accurate data has led to game-changing insights from day one, and operational efficiencies are yielding cost savings across the board.

Key takeaways at a glance

Entire TELUS fleet deployed on the Geotab platform
Compliance with
National Safety Code (NSC)
, Hours of Service (HOS) standards through the existing Geotab platform and hardware, without additional logging hardware or software spending
Improvement from 63% to 95% ELD compliance
Usage of large datasets from Geotab API for advanced analytics with existing dashboards and systems for metrics reporting around utilization, safety, greenhouse gas (GHG) and NSC compliance

The implementation of this advanced telematics platform and data-driven analytics provides TELUS the support it requires to better its fleet management strategy. This partnership with Geotab will continue accelerating TELUS’ sustainability journey by providing the tools needed to set, measure and achieve targets.

Whether you’re a small business looking to add vehicle diagnostics, live video streaming and in-vehicle Wi-Fi to stay connected while on-the-go – or you’re a large commercial fleet in need of real-time monitoring, advanced reporting and ELD capabilities – TELUS Business has a solution that’s ideal for your needs.

Connect with a TELUS specialist

to learn more about how

TELUS Business Fleet Management solutions

can help you optimize fleet performance – You may qualify for special offers and

Owner Perks

, such as exclusive fuel savings with PetroCanada’s Superpass.*

*Terms and conditions apply. See

Owner Perks

for details.

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