Iowa City Cuts Salt Use With Webtech System

West Des Moines, Iowa, has been using Webtech Fleet Center for nine years. Webtech Fleet Center is installed in 40 of the city’s vehicles and has been a boon to the success of the city’s fleet management, according to Webtech Wireless.

Using Webtech Fleet Center, West Des Moines has cut its salt usage from 4,000 to 5,000 tons in 2007 and 2008, to less than 2,300 tons in 2012 and 2013 combined even with an expanded infrastructure.

Bret Hodne, director of public works, believes that his agency’s success can be credited to its three operational pillars. He says that all three pillars tie together into having a good fleet management solution in place, and Webtech Fleet Center is an integral part of it.

The first of three operational pillars is training and educating his staff. Hodne says that his agency properly educates its staff on how de-icer materials work, from both a chemical and operational standpoint. Without proper training, an operator may use more de-icer than is needed because he/she is not educated in the proper amount that is needed.

However, even with proper education, an operator may still accidently use more material than is needed if he or she does not have a way of accurately measuring the material. This is the agency’s second pillar, having a control apparatus in city vehicles that are integrated into the fleet management solution that can apply the precise amount of material needed for a given task.

The last pillar is the fleet management solution itself. It provides all the important information that a fleet manager might need like whether or not the city has met its target, and if not, what’s needed to reach that target.