Vehicle Fleet Tracking

Controlling a fleet of vehicles, trucks, buses, light vans or even private care is a very responsible task. Large corporations and some of the nationwide trucking companies have hundreds of vehicle in their fleet, and annual overheads and turnovers that run into millions of dollars every year. Fleet management is the management of a company's vehicle fleet with vehicle fleet tracking.

With the cost of fuel rising steadily, any slight waiver in efficiency levels can rapidly create a situation where profits become losses and companies can totter into insolvency.

One major breakthrough that has gone a long way to help these hard pressed fleet operators keep their costs under control is the gradual introduction of vehicle fleet tracking, powered by the GPS satellite network.

Global Positioning Systems (GPS) were developed originally for the US Department of Defence to provide tracking facilities for their vast and varied fleet of vehicles, situated everywhere in the World. At any given time there are a total of 26 satellites orbiting the Earth. Working in groups of three, they cover a specific radius. The system has been programmed so that as one satellite moves out of a certain radius another one enters it. The levels of accuracy achieved by the GPS system is remarkably high, and can track a signal within a two meter radius. Made available to the general public, this GPS network has been put to work for vehicle fleet tracking.

The GPS system has been in use by the US Defence forces for the last twenty years. When the satellite system reached its maximum capacity as far as the Department of Defence was concerned, they made the service available to friends of the United States as a gift to humanity.

In its early format, GPS had limited advantages, as it was simply capable of tracking a vehicles position and reporting it. However as the system developed and became more sophisticated, the ability to track vehicle movement in real time made it a much more attractive prospect for vehicle fleet operators.

Nowadays by utilizing the full power of the GPS powered real time fleet vehicle tracking system, fleet controllers enjoy an infinitely more flexible and pinpoint control over their entire fleet no matter where they are situated, and can rapidly detect any anomalies or divergence from their controlled schedule.

The necessity to control overheads is what makes the GPS system such a boon to fleet controllers in these difficult times for the transport industry.

What a vehicle fleet tracking system offers control of is as follows:

  • To verify if the vehicle's driver has moved of off his planned route.
  • To verify if the vehicle's driver is driving in a fast, erratic and dangerous manner
  • To verify if the vehicle's driver is making unauthorized stops and if so for how long
  • To verify if the vehicle's driver is taking too much time to load or unload his vehicle.
  • If the vehicle has been stolen, it can be tracked rapidly through its transmitter. Some of the more modern versions can be programmed to immobilize the vehicle's fuel injection computer, and the vehicle will grind to a gradual halt.

These are some of the factors that will be highly significant in the efficient and profitable management of a large fleet of commercial vehicles. Financial officers for these large operations, usually notoriously disinclined to make any form of investment, actively encourage the installation of these systems in the company's vehicles. Insurance companies also show their approval, by offering considerable discounts in their premiums for those companies who install the GPS systems.

A few short years ago, fleet operators were completely in the dark as to the exact movements of the vehicles under their control, and were largely dependant on the cooperation of their employees to keep costs under control. Today these silent watchers in the sky are keeping their eye on vehicle fleet tracking, and that all the vehicles are where they should be as part of the plan.