ATRI Telematics Research Finds Cost-Per-Mile KPI Underused by Fleets

New American Transportation Research Institute research suggests that the telematics measures fleets value most are not always the ones they use most often. FleetOwner reported September 10 that the study compared the perceived importance and adoption of key performance indicators across trucking safety, operations and maintenance. The result gives carriers a practical way to audit dashboards that may collect more data than managers can consistently act on.

Cost per mile received the highest importance score in the operations category, yet only 73% of respondents said they used it. For safety, the four most widely adopted measures were critical events, speeding, risky driving behavior and hard braking. Those categories can help fleets identify coaching needs, compare routes and equipment, and find recurring risks before they become collisions or expensive downtime.

The useful question is not how many metrics a platform can display. It is whether each measure has a clear owner, reliable inputs and a defined response. A hard-braking alert may require context from road conditions or video. A maintenance fault should connect to a work order and repair decision. Cost per mile is meaningful only when fuel, labor, maintenance, insurance and utilization are recorded consistently.

Fleets reviewing telematics should start with a small group of business outcomes, document calculation rules and train supervisors before expanding the scorecard. Drivers also need to understand what is measured, how context is considered and how coaching data differs from discipline. Transparent use can improve trust while reducing alert fatigue. The research does not prescribe a single dashboard for every carrier, but it highlights a common opportunity: turn existing truck data into fewer, better decisions that support safety, uptime and operating control.