Here’s a question worth asking your team: is cost-per-mile on your fleet dashboard? New research from the American Transportation Research Institute found it’s the metric fleets value most, and also the one most likely to be missing. That’s a gap worth closing, and it’s simpler to fix than it sounds.

The KPI Gap ATRI Found 

ATRI’s report, From Telematics Data to Decisions, ranked cost-per-mile as the single most valuable operational metric for motor carriers. Yet only 73% of surveyed carriers actively track it. Meanwhile, nearly every fleet tracks a familiar set of safety KPIs: critical events, speeding, risky driving behavior, and hard braking. 

Those safety metrics matter. But as ATRI puts it, the metrics with the greatest impact aren’t always the ones most widely used. Cost-per-mile is the clearest example. It’s the metric fleets rank highest in importance, and the one most likely to be missing from the dashboard. 

Why Cost-Per-Mile Gets Skipped 

The gap makes sense once you look at how each metric gets built. Safety KPIs come from a single sensor event: a hard brake, a speeding threshold, a critical event flag. They’re easy to pull straight from telematics hardware. 

True cost-per-mile takes more than a single sensor. It requires combining mileage data with fuel spend, maintenance costs, and driver time. That’s more setup work. It’s why so many fleets default to whatever populates automatically on their standard dashboard, instead of building the metric that reflects real operational cost. 

Turning Raw Data Into the KPIs That Matter 

If you’re running Geotab, the raw ingredients for true cost-per-mile are already flowing through your system. The missing piece is usually the reporting layer that combines them. Geotab’s advanced reporting and analytics tools, including its Data Connector, pull your existing telematics data together with fuel and maintenance records. The result is a single operational view instead of three separate reports. 

That’s the difference between a dashboard full of default metrics and one built around what genuinely drives your margins.

Where Northern BI Fits 

This is exactly where we like to help. Northern BI translates raw Geotab data into the operational KPIs that move the needle most: cost-per-mile, utilization, and maintenance ROI, well beyond the metrics that happen to be easiest to pull. 

Here’s a practical challenge: pull up your fleet dashboard right now. Is cost-per-mile on it? If not, that’s a gap worth closing before your next budget cycle. 

Schedule a reporting and dashboard review with Northern BI. See how your Geotab data can build the KPIs that genuinely reflect your fleet’s performance. 

Sources

• American Transportation Research Institute: New ATRI Research Identifies Key Telematics Performance Measures for Motor Carriers 
• FleetOwner: ATRI releases research on key telematics performance measures