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GPS Tracking for Your Fleet: Not Just Dots on a Map Rastrac Team | May 18, 2016 12:20:52 PM

Lots of business owners think that GPS tracking is just dots on a map, but it can be much more.With GPS becoming such a commonplace technology, it’s easy to forget just how powerful a solution GPS tracking for vehicle fleets can be. After all, GPS is something that comes with most smartphones nowadays, so it can’t be all that special.

But, GPS tracking for a business’ fleet of vehicles is much more than just dots on a map—it’s a modern business solution that can help companies overcome obstacles to business growth.

A comprehensive GPS tracking solution for business can provide information beyond the location of your fleet vehicles during a position update. They can also provide the following:

Verifiable Evidence of Vehicle Locations at Specific Times

With a GPS tracking system, it’s possible to not only view the most recent position data for your fleet vehicles, but to review where each individual vehicle has been in between position data uploads.

Using this information, you can spot which vehicles are staying on task, and which vehicles are constantly going off-course. Frequent unauthorized side trips can be an indication that drivers aren’t using their time efficiently, or are using company vehicles for non-business purposes.

By spotting this behavior early, you can limit the amount of company resources wasted on non-business activities.

Alternatively, this information can be used to prove that fleet vehicles were present for a given service or delivery in case of a dispute. For example, say that there is a disagreement that a load of product never arrived at a retailer location. With GPS, you can track the position of the delivery truck and see if it made a stop at the appropriate location, and when it arrived.

These are just a couple of ways that having GPS location data can help businesses.

Remote Monitoring of Vehicle Statistics

Many modern GPS systems do more than just track data. Sophisticated GPS units can plug into a vehicle’s onboard diagnostics system to provide remote monitoring of key engine performance data such as:

  • Engine fuel consumption
  • Temperature
  • Miles traveled

With this data, and other information collected from the vehicle’s diagnostics system, spotting when a vehicle needs maintenance is greatly simplified. By spotting potential maintenance issues early, it is possible to enact preventative maintenance before the problem becomes larger and more expensive to repair.

Powerful Theft Prevention and Recovery Assistance

For any company, the loss of a fleet vehicle is a major blow. The cost of replacing a lost or stolen vehicle can vary greatly depending on the vehicle type, whether it was owned or leased, what equipment/cargo it was carrying, and the insurance attached to the vehicle.

However, the costs of the theft of a vehicle go beyond replacing the vehicle and any incidental items that were on board. The loss of a vehicle means that you have one less asset to field to meet business objectives until you can find and properly equip a suitable replacement.

This can make it harder to complete mission-critical operations in a timely manner, creating additional expenses.

GPS tracking systems can help combat vehicle theft by giving you recent GPS coordinates for stolen vehicles, speeding up recovery and increasing the chances of getting the vehicle back intact. This can help you get vehicles back into the field quickly so that disruption is kept to a minimum.

Some GPS systems can even be used to remotely disable vehicle starters so that thieves cannot get them started, making it more difficult to steal the vehicle. 

These benefits of using GPS fleet tracking go well above and beyond simply having “dots on a map,” empowering businesses to get more done with their fleet vehicles while conserving resources. Find out more about how GPS tracking can help your business today!

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