Case Study: City of Austin, TX achieves resilient emergency fleet response and real-time visibility during Winter Storm Uri with Geotab

City of Austin, Texas Managing fleets with telematics in a oncein-a-century storm

The City of Austin’s Fleet Mobility Services manages roughly 7,100 vehicles across a 4,200-square-mile region, supporting 25 departments and logging over 42 million miles annually. Facing about 600 crashes per year and the need to cut costs, improve safety, enable predictive maintenance, and meet sustainability goals, the department sought a scalable telematics solution to provide real-time visibility and actionable data across a diverse municipal fleet.

Austin began installing Geotab telematics in October 2020 and by Winter Storm Uri in February 2021 had the system in place on key vehicles; telematics proved critical for tracking and routing 2,500-gallon fuel trucks that kept generators and emergency services running and for coordinating 24/7 bottled-water deliveries (over 5 million bottles) during the boil-water event. The real-time control and insights convinced city leaders of telematics’ value, leading to wider rollout (about 800 vehicles installed to date) and plans to connect the entire fleet to drive safety, efficiency, predictive maintenance, fuel monitoring, and motorpool optimization.

City of Austin, TX

Rick Harland

Assistant Director, Fleet Mobility Services