How Port Colborne uses Geotab to manage 300+ vehicles across five departments

The City of Port Colborne, a small municipality in Ontario, Canada, manages over 300 pieces of equipment across five departments — bylaw enforcement, parks, roads, waterways, and snow removal. With Geotab's easy-to-use fleet management platform and integrated camera systems, the city now resolves insurance claims in hours instead of weeks, has achieved a driver performance score of 75% or higher across all departments, and is actively planning the electrification of its municipal fleet using real-world data. 

The challenge: managing a growing municipal fleet without real-time visibility

The City of Port Colborne operated a legacy fleet management system that was slow and difficult to use when staff needed to retrieve data quickly. Insurance claims involving slip-and-fall incidents, parking lot accidents, and vehicle collisions required days or weeks to investigate — placing the burden of proof on the city with limited evidence. Without real-time location data or integrated video, supervisors had no way to remotely monitor winter road operations or verify equipment deployment during waterway emergencies.

As the fleet grew in complexity across five departments, the city needed a solution that could serve both operational oversight and risk management without requiring technical expertise from its staff.

The solution: Geotab fleet management platform with integrated cameras

The City of Port Colborne implemented Geotab's fleet management platform through Dican Inc., integrating onboard cameras with the MyGeotab dashboard. The platform, provides all five municipal departments with a single, intuitive interface for real-time operational data, video access, driver performance monitoring, and fleet analytics — no IT specialist required.

How the city of Port Colborne uses Geotab?

Port Colborne applies Geotab across four core areas, each generating measurable impact on safety, efficiency, and accountability:

1. Insurance Claim Resolution

The City of Port Colborne uses Geotab camera footage and GPS data to resolve insurance claims related to slip-and-fall incidents, parking lot disputes, and vehicle collisions. Claims that previously took days or weeks to investigate are now resolved in hours. Fleet Manager Tim Anderson confirmed the city used Geotab to handle a waterway-related insurance claim by identifying exactly which vehicles responded, at what time, and where — pulling footage and location data directly from the MyGeotab dashboard in minutes.

2. Camera Safety Systems for High-Risk Vehicles

• 360-degree camera in the road sweeper: Installed to give the operator full visibility of curbs, gutters, and passing vehicles, improving safety during street cleaning operations. The city is now replicating this setup in a second sweeper.
• Side-bin camera on the lugger truck: Allows the operator to visually confirm that the surrounding area is clear before the side bin activates — preventing pedestrian collisions during waste collection operations.
• 4-camera live view system on snow plows: Supervisors can monitor plow operations remotely from home or any off-site location through the MyGeotab dashboard. If an operator reports deteriorating weather or requests additional resources, supervisors can verify field conditions in real time without being physically present.

3. Driver Scorecard Program

The City of Port Colborne activated Geotab's driver scorecard feature and divided reporting by department. Supervisors and managers receive monthly performance reports without manual data collection. When the city submitted a Request for Quotation for insurance renewal, Tim Anderson used scorecard data to demonstrate that Port Colborne maintained a driver performance threshold of 75% or higher across all departments — directly supporting the city's case with objective, data-backed evidence.

Results at a glance

"With Geotab, we can log in and access the data within minutes. For collision investigations or insurance claims, the platform makes it easy to pull footage and data in real-time. It's so helpful and it's very easy to navigate on a daily basis. We don't have to be a specialist through Geotab or IT — anyone can just go on and it works."

— Tim Anderson, Fleet, Stores and Facilities Manager, City of Port Colborne

Next Steps

Port Colborne is using Geotab's data analytics to evaluate which vehicles in its fleet are candidates for electric vehicle conversion. By analyzing real-world route data, idle time, and usage patterns already captured by the platform, the city can make evidence-based decisions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve cost efficiency and serve both taxpayers and municipal sustainability commitments — without requiring additional surveys or manual audits.

“As we move towards electrifying our fleet, Geotab is helping us make data-driven decisions on which vehicles to electrify, aligning with our sustainability goals and providing real savings for the city,” Anderson concluded.