Tag: Fleet Tracking

A Warning About GPS Tracking Devices

When it comes to GPS tracking devices you need to understand one thing right off the bat. If you don’t learn this you could end up spending hundreds of dollars on a device that isn’t going to meet your needs by doing what you think it is going to do. If you are like me then you want to avoid spending money (that you don’t have) on something that isn’t what you need.

You need to know that there are two main types of GPS tracking devices. There are real time tracking devices and there are data logging devices. While they both are in fact GPS devices and they both track a person’s location they do no provide the same tracking experience for the user.

If you are looking for a device that will let you find out where a person or asset or vehicle is at any given point in the day then you are looking for a real time tracking device. This is what most people think about when they go searching on the internet. They want something that will let them type in a cell phone number and they will be able to pull up the exact location of a friend, a boyfriend, a lover, or a child. While a real time tracking device doesn’t do that exactly, that is the type of experience that you are going to get with that type of device.

Most real time trackers let you use their website or software to pull up the exact location of a person (really the device) at any given moment in time. This usually uses something like Google Maps and give you a location that is normally really accurate. There are things that can interfere with this, but it is usually really good.

Data loggers, on the other hand, find the devices position at predetermined intervals. This could be as short as 3 seconds or as long as 5 minutes. The interval doesn’t matter. The data logger will simply find the position and then record it on its hard drive to be downloaded later by the device owner.

With a data logger you actually have to have the tracker in order to access the data. You cannot know the location of the tracker remotely. You have to have it your possession in order for it work. With a data logger you can only ever know where the device has been.

The distinction between the two is very important to understand as each of them has its own positives and negatives. Let’s see how each of these would be used in the following applications:

Vehicle GPS Tracking Devices

There are three main reasons that people are going to track a vehicle with GPS. There are business reasons, safety reasons, and relational reasons.

Fleet Tracking

Fleets can cost companies thousands of dollars to maintain and effectively run. Studies have shown that implementation of fleet tracking benefits small businesses by increasing profits, reducing driver waste, and increasing on-time deliveries/visits.

All fleet tracking is real time. This allows dispatchers to route vehicles and personnel in efficient ways. Efficient businesses make happy, repeat customers and end up making owners more money. But just because it works in real time doesn’t mean that the data is not available for managers to go over when they need to (say, in the case of a trouble worker no completing jobs or showing up late to appointments).

These tracking devices are most often installed directly in the vehicle and are hardwired to the power supply for constant tracking capabilities. It is concealed, provides theft protection, assists police with vehicle recovery, and promotes an efficient workforce.

Data loggers would be a mess in this application and would give practically no benefit to a company trying to improve its operation.

Track A Teen Driver

Tracking a teen driver is a little different than fleet tracking, but not necessarily so. Real time tracking still provides all the benefits that it does with fleet tracking. Parents can determine the speed of their child as they drive, receive updates if they exceed a certain speed, know when they travel outside certain predetermined boundaries, or make sudden brakes. All of these are features offered on many different teen driver trackers on the market and they are only available for real time trackers.

One must be particularly careful when choosing a real time tracker. The very best option is to get one that will hardwire into the car. This will make your job as a parent easier because you won’t have to charge the battery constantly (most real time devices are power hungry!). Devices like the Zoombak – though cheaper than other devices – suffer from this very fault. A device that will not hardwire is no good as a theft recovery device and does you no good if your child is in the car and it gets car jacked! If you are concerned about your teen’s safety then why not give the best protection possible?

A data logger will still work to track a teen driver, but it is going to work much differently. You’ll still know when your child brakes suddenly or goes way too fast – you just won’t know until well after the fact and you plow through the data to figure it out. I recently tracked my wife secretly for a month and that much data is very difficult to work through – especially if your teen is driving everyday. It can be done, its just no fun.

Another thing to mention here is that data loggers are often significantly cheaper than real time GPS trackers. A good data logger might cost you $100. A real time device might cost $200 and then cost $15 a month with a year minimum contract. That is certainly more expensive. You’ll just have the weigh the pros and cons yourself about this one.

Catching A Cheater

What type of GPS tracking device is best to track a cheater? It all depends really. We have already seen that a real time tracking device is going to cost you a pretty penny. If you have the money then I would recommend going this route. That way you can verify whether or not they are at work when they say they are “working late” or if they are shaking up with the hussy from accounting at a hotel off the interstate.

You’ll probably want one that can be installed secretly in the car and that won’t be easily detectable. Unfortunately, most fleet tracking devices are either right there in the cab (under the steering wheel) or easily detectable if you look under the hood. This is fine if you are tracking someone who never really takes a look under the hood of the car. There are some other real time trackers that will work in this capacity that have a battery life of several days – but these always run the risk of being discovered while planted on the vehicle (like in a wheel well) or while they are being swapped out to recharge the battery.

Data loggers are most useful in catching a cheater than any other vehicle tracking application. They have a significantly longer battery life so they can remain in play for much longer. They are also often smaller than real time trackers so they are more suitable for the covert nature of this particular tracking application. You just have to go through the data once you get the logger back. This isn’t the most fun in the world – but neither is being cheated on! That is plenty of motivation to sift through the data.

Personal GPS Tracking Devices

When it comes to personal tracking applications there are two main reasons to have a device on your person. They are for sport and for safety.

Sport

GPS watches are one of the most visible examples of personal tracking devices used in a sport application. Whether you are running or cycling these devices provide powerful information for anyone trying to make the most out of their training regimen. They are not cheap, but they sure are cool.

Interestingly enough, these devices are almost always a data logger – despite the steep price tag. However, something like the i-Got U pretty much does a comparable task as something like the Garmin Forerunner 405 and is $200 cheaper. Sure, you certainly get more with the Garmin so you are going to have to decide for yourself if the more is really $200 more. All data loggers are pretty much equal in terms of GPS tracking capabilities – they just have different software that lets you interact with the data.

I personally have never seen a real time sport tracking device. To be honest, they are unnecessary and would be super expensive.

Safety

The second type of personal GPS tracking devices are used for personal safety. These are the the child tracking devices that will save your child if they get abducted, or the GPS tracker for Alzheimer’s suffers, or the SPOT satellite messenger that alerts your family and friends of your hiking accident. All of these devices do their tracking in real time.

Small GPS Tracking Devices

As you can imagine, many of the applications mentioned above call for small devices. You don’t want a huge, bulky device strapped to your wrist while you run. That just wouldn’t be fun. Similarly, covert tracking is best done with the smallest device possible.

What is the difference in size between real time GPS tracking devices and data loggers?

Well, the answer isn’t that simple, but generally speaking data loggers can be much smaller than real time trackers. This is simply because real time trackers also have to find a place to put its cell phone modem to let it talk over the wireless network in your particular country. Real time trackers also suffer from reduced battery life given that they have so much more to do than a data logger. If a real time tracker and a data logger have the exact same battery the real time tracker will run out of battery first – often long before the data logger.

This is why small real time trackers have a terrible battery life. One industry leading child GPS tracking device had an effective battery life of one day! That is a lot of battery charging for parents and really pushed the viability of the product as a safety device for children.

Real Time or Data Logger?

What is best for your particular tracking needs? You are the only one who is going to be able answer that question. Now you know the issues between the two types of GPS tracking devices and how they affect three of the main applications for them. If you have any questions I’ll do my best to answer them in the comments below.

GPS Car Tracking Device’s Effectiveness Highlighted By Musician And His Lost Violin

What would you do if you lost something worth approximate $500,000 (£300,000) in a taxi cab? Well, a GPS car tracking device helped reunite one musician who lost his concert violin in a taxi cab that brought him home late one night after a long day of practice for his New York city debut. Tired and barely awake from his strenuous day of practice, the young violinists careless left the cab without grabbing his violin. Shocked and in a panic about the loss, he quickly realized his mistake and immediately called the police. The police were then able to contact the taxi cab service that brought the musician home and access the GPS car tracking log of the taxi that that brought the musician home. Thank God for technology and honest taxi drivers!

Here is a quick video of the musician, Hahn-Bin, telling his story on the Early Show. GPS tracking isn’t mentioned in the video, but it helps you get the gist of what went down.

This little episode really helps us understand some of the overall benefits that we can experience when we begin using GPS car tracking in a much larger scale. These benefits include:

Better customer service from service fleets.  GPS fleet tracking is often seen solely as something that will help companies better manage their own fleets and be more efficient in their routing capabilities.  It is no doubt that taxi cabs benefit a great deal from this ability to route the closest taxi to a call on the fly – it ensures that the company saves the most money on gas and can make more service calls, both of which will end up increasing the company’s revenue.

But what is often overlooked by many who want to use  fleet tracking is that it will also help them be better at serving their customers.  Would this taxi company have been able to track down the violin in less than 12 hours if they had not had real time car tracking devices installed in their cabs?  I doubt it.  It would have taken them forever to find the taxi that drove Hahn-Bin to his apartment because they would have had to rely on traditional method of finding the cab rather than on GPS tracking technology.  Hahn-Bin would have had to go down to the local police precinct and looked through a bunch of taxi driver photos and even then he might not have recognized his driver.

With GPS tracking this was all taken care of because all the cab company had to do was plug the pick up coordinates and the drop of coordinates into their GPS tracking software and the would have had the cab ID number of the car in question. Then all they had to do was get a hold of the cabbie and get the violin back into the hands of Hahn-Bin. Now that is great customer service brought about by GPS fleet tracking.

More accurate and effective law enforcement assistance. Another thing that this episode highlights is how much more effective the police can be when they have GPS assistance. Sure, it can also be a little scary when you start giving a government entity information like your GPS coordinates, but it can also be extremely helpful if those people are actually seeking your good and not your harm.

In this case, the police were able to respond in a very timely manner thanks to the GPS tracking device for cars installed in the taxi cab. Just imagine what type of good they could do if they also had the GPS coordinates of every one in a given city? They would be able to find out all the people who were in a 1 mile radius of a murder or other violent crime, helping them track down witnesses and gather information on suspects in the case. While information like this could also be used for evil and it is probably decades before such technology would even be possible, it sure would be a great way to reduce crime or at the very least punish criminals faster.

Increased honesty.  If people know that you can be very certain whether or not they are lying they will generally be much more truthful with you. When you have a GPS tracking device for a car installed in your personal vehicle you are probably going to be much more honest with someone when they ask you where you have been driving. When there is a high level of verifiability there is also a high level of honesty.

This is one reason why covert GPS vehicle tracking can be a mixed bag. Sometime it is necessary to help us understand what someone (maybe a spouse or a rebellious teen) is doings, but other times we would just rather have them stop being self destructive and be honest with us. I foresee that as GPS tracking become more prevalent in GPS cell phones and other portable GPS devices we will also see an increase in the level of honest that we have with other people in our lives. This honest is will make the whole world a better place.

These are just a few of the types of benefits that we can see when GPS car tracking devices begin to become even more prevalent in society.  Sure, there is still a long way to go, but this example of the returned violin is a very promising story if we are to develop into a society where GPS tracking is used for the greater good rather than as a tool in the hands of evil. We still have a long way to go before we can say that GPS tracking is safe, but I think that one day soon we just might be there.

Fleet Tracking: The Commercial Application of GPS Tracking

As we have mentioned time and time again on this site, GPS tracking has a ton of different applications in a variety of different solutions.  It works great for lots of consumer focused tracking applications – the person who wants to track a spouse to see if they are cheating, the father who wants to track their teen to see how they drive, or the parent who wants to track their child to keep them safe from predators and other safety threats.  But up until now we have steered away from one of the most prolific and widely accepted use of GPS based tracking in the world – fleet tracking.

How Fleet Tracking Works

GPS fleet tracking works off all the same basic principles that have been discussed all across the this blog. It all begins with some satellites that are currently orbiting the earth broadcasting this signal that can be picked up by specialized receivers. These receivers than give that information to a small computer which does some math called trilateration that calculates the exact position of the receiver when it received the signals. This information is then sent to another part of a GPS tracking device where it is then transmitted wirelessly across the great expanses of space and time until it appears on a server somewhere.

On this server somewhere the position information is then ran through some fleet tracking software which makes the information palatable to a business owner or dispatch operator. This individual then uses this information to better run the business, route drivers effectively, monitor worker activity, or schedule necessary maintenance on vehicles. It is all rather simply yet amazingly complex. The process is simple and clearly defined, and yet the theory and technology behind the process is shrouded in mystery and even has the allure of a magic-like quality to it. For many people, GPS tracking just is and there is no need to explain it.

Fleet Tracking Software

But this is a good tie into talking a little bit about the nerve center of any good flee tracking system – the software package. Most GPS tracking devices are going to do a great job of calculating their position information and then sending it to a server somewhere for it to be processed. If you think about this information, which is usually just simple information like position coordinates, speed, and direction, it is not going to be very useful to a business person trying to make real time decisions that will benefit their company right now.

Sure, it would be good to know that your truck has just made a delivery to coordinates 30.299691,-97.951401 and that they are now heading south by southwest at 25 mph – but how is that going to help anyone get this truck to its next stop? It isn’t. A dispatcher would have to go to a mapping software like GoogleMaps and enter the information gather by the fleet GPS tracking device manually to find that they are on Hacienda Ridge in Austin, Texas. This is doable, but it will take a lot of time to find the closet truck to a new service call if you have a fleet of 3 or more vehicle.

This is where fleet tracking software comes in. All the things that you might want to do by hand with all the information you gather from your real time tracking device can be done automatically and displayed to you on the fly when using fleet tracking software. Want to get a birds eye view of all the vehicles in your fleet at any point in time? Want to know if any of your drivers have left their area of operation for any reason? Want to see if one of your vehicles has been idling for more than 30 seconds? This is the type of information that commercial grade GPS fleet tracking devices and fleet tracking software can provide you.

Heck, there is even a very decent free fleet tracking software package called OpenGTS. It is featured on our list of free GPS tracking software suites. It is open source and complete free to use. You do have to jump over some technical hurdles if you are not already familiar with setting this type of thing up, but for some companies this can be well worth the extra effort.

Using a GPS Fleet Tracking System Effectively

Now that we all know the low down on how fleet tracking works from a technical standpoint we should probably try and figure out how we can leverage this technology to make businesses better. If you are a business owner you are already having ideas pop into your head about how a GPS fleet tracking system can make your business more efficient, make more service calls, and end up making you a lot more money. And this is exactly the outcome that many small business owners experience when they install fleet tracking systems in your fleet. According to an Aberdeen group study, small fleets (1-10 vehicles) saw an completed work orders increase by 25% after two years of using a tracking system.

Here are a few things that a business owner can do to make the most out of their tracking devices:

  • Use it to identify wasteful employees – cutting off the fat from your operation or turning the fat into lean muscles through some disciplinary action will help you get more bang for your salary buck
  • Use it to more efficiently route drivers to new service calls – getting the closest driver to the service call will save the company two invaluable assets: time and fuel.
  • Use it to incentivize performance – getting workers to work harder by rewarding hard work is a great way to increase the overall effectiveness of an operation

And those are just a few of the ways that a fleet vehicle tracking system could be used to benefit a business. There are more too.

Isn’t This Crazy?

It is clear that GPS fleet tracking is a very effective way for businesses to streamline their operations, cut costs, and improve overall worker output. Finding a good fleet tracking solution is as simple as going to the internet and finding one of the many different service providers that have fleet tracking components in their arsenal of products. It might take some time to research the best service providers and best prices, but that is the type of investment that you need to make if you want to take your business to the next level with a fleet tracking system.