Tag: fleet vehicle tracking

Car Tracking Devices: Considered and Evaluated

Car tracking devices are anything but cheap. If you are going to buy one of these high tech, expensive products there are several things that you should know about them before committing your finances (and in some cases, your security) on a device that you know will work in theory, but have no experience in practice.

The first area that this article is going to examine is the different ways that people often use car trackers. After a brief examination we will examine some of the tracker characteristics that any potential customer should evaluate before making their final decision.

Ways To Use a Car Tracking Device

There seem to be four main reasons to use a GPS tracking device inside a car. They are to track inexperienced, immature drivers, verify suspicions of infidelity, improve business operations, and recover property.

Teen Drivers

We have gone into great detail about the different reasons why a parent would install a tracking device in their teen’s car. We have even discussed some of the ways that a tracking device for cars can be leveraged to help make teens safer drivers. Needless to say we won’t go into a lot of that stuff here. You just need to know that more teens die each year from automobile accidents than any other cause. These are all preventable deaths and are often the fault of the teens themselves.

If you knew that a tracking device would save your teens life, would you spend the $400 for it?

Catching Cheaters

Cheaters suck. They often lie. They also need to be caught. Most of the time the person being cheated on needs help in pinning the cheater into a corner so that they have to admit their infidelity. GPS tracking can often help them in this endeavor. Simply install a tracker in the vehicle of the suspected cheater (but only if you own that vehicle – tracking another person’s property without their consent is illegal) and you can know for certain if they are staying at work late or doing something a little more suspect.

Fleet Vehicle Tracking

Car GPS tracking has a long and proven track record in commercial applications. It has been shown to improve worker productivity, reduce costs, enhance the customer experience, and improve vehicle maintenance. What more could a business owner want?

Theft Recovery

Theft happens. Having a device that will tell you where your car is in real time when you wake up in the morning and your car isn’t out front can be invaluable. It is also nice to know that the crooks that stole your car are going to prison rather than profiting off of your property.

Considerations For Choosing A GPS Car Tracking Devices

If you come to the conclusion that you need a device to track a car then you have to take several things into consideration when making your decision. These devices are anything but cheap, so making sure you pick something that is going to meet your needs is very important. Here is a list of some of the main things you will want to think through:

Hardwired Vs. Stand Alone

This may not sound like that big of a decision, but it is probably one of the most important decisions that you need to make. The main reason for this is battery life. Tracking devices, especially real time tracking devices, run through battery power very quickly. Some GPS car tracking devices, like the Zoombak, only have an active tracking life of several hours. That is extremely low if you need to track the vehicle for longer than that.

Hardwired car tracking devices have the benefit of getting their power directly from the vehicle itself. As long as your battery is live your tracker will be able to give you the position of the car. Some hardwired trackers can be installed covertly so that they are not easily seen or accessible. Others are installed under the steering wheel in the OBD-II port and can be easily seen if you know what to look for.

Stand alone devices do not benefit from the car’s power source and must rely on their own battery. This means that you can have an active tracking life of several weeks to just a few hours depending on the type and size of the tracker you are using. This can be fine – it just depends on what you are using the tracker for and how much money you want to spend on it all.

Real Time Vs. Data Loggers

GPS logger

Probably the next most important thing for people to think about when going with a car tracker is whether or not they want to see the position information in real time or if they are alright with recording the data and looking at it later, after the device has been retrieved from the vehicle. Most people want to do the tracking in real time. There is just something special about being able to watch your asset move from location to location.

The price tag on real time car tracking devices is nothing to sniff at. They are often much more expensive, two to three times as expensive, than their data logging counter parts – and that doesn’t even take into consideration the monthly subscription fee required by most tracking providers. When that is taken into consideration it can cost four times as much just in the first year alone!

But if your need is for a real time tracker then you are going to fork out the cash.

Web-Based Vs. Software Based

Many people looking for GPS tracking want something that they can access from any web enabled computer. This is most often available with real time GPS tracking devices. This is because the tracking device will transmit the position and vector data over a wireless network to your tracking provider. The provider will then make this data available to you on a secure website available on the internet. Only you are going to be able to access the information since you are the only one with the user name and password for the tracker.

Here is a graphic of how this all works:

How web based tracking works

Software based car tracking devices are generally data loggers. Most of the time the data logger comes with a CD that contains some sort of tracking software that you need to install on your computer to make sense of the data the device records. For example, the i-Got U GT-600 comes with this type of software on a small mini-CD. The software works with the device to display your trip data on pretty Google-based maps and helps you integrate photos into your journey. The software then lets you post this information out on to the web if you want to share the data with friends or family.

While most car tracking devices don’t need some of the features available on the i-GotU (that device is designed to help people share vacations, hikes, or other fun excursions), they will have some sort of software that will help you make sense of the data on the tracker. This is helpful for users because it means you don’t need to know a ton about telemetry in order to make sense of your tracking information.

Covert Vs. Open

You are wanting a car tracking device for a certain reason, and that reason is going to determine whether or not you want to use a covert tracker or something that is a little more easily seen and accessed. Above we mentioned 4 different applications where are GPS car tracker would be useful. Here are some of the defining characteristics of a covert vs. open deployment in each category:

CovertOpen
Teen Drivers
  • Engaged in or suspected of illegal activity
  • Extremely rebellious and likely to destroy or bypass car tracker
  • Acts also as a good theft recover device
  • Parents have a relationship of trust and mutual respect
  • Teen sees tracker as safety device and is clearly aware of consequences of bad driving
Catching Cheaters
  • Cheater is suspicious of you knowing
  • Cheater could turn violent and abusive if your search for truth is discovered
  • Cheater is observant or tech savvy
  • None
Fleet Vehicle Tracking
  • Acts as an excellent theft recovery device
  • Catches wasteful employees in the act
  • Reminds employees to work their best all the time
  • Allows for integration with dispatchers, increasing efficiency in workforce
  • Promotes healthy employer/employee relationships
Theft Recovery
  • Hidden trackers will be overlooked by less accomplished criminals
  • Ability to work as long as the battery is still giving power to the car
  • None

As you can see, there are some applications where having an easily accessible car tracking device is not really in your best interest. You can still use it in these instances, you just run the risk of wasting your money.

Should You Use A Car Tracking Device?

Not everything labeled as a car tracking device is going to be what you are looking for for your particular needs. Be sure to carefully consider the purchase you are making. Ask questions of yourself and the potential supplier. The more questions you ask, the better informed you are going to be and the more successful you are going to be in your desire to track a car with GPS.

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.