Be Proactive with a GPS Asset Tracking System!

Protecting your company’s high-value assets isn’t always easy. From trucks to trailers, generators to shipping containers, businesses have countless assets that need to be carefully monitored for their day to day operations.

However, keeping an eye on these assets is easier said than done. Not only can assets be deployed to locations far from your central office, there’s only so much time in the day for you to monitor and manage these assets. Worse yet, there’s always the risk of theft—particularly for smaller assets with a higher value.

Thankfully, there is a way to proactively manage and protect your assets in the field without having to leave the office: GPS asset tracking systems.

Protecting High-Value Assets from Theft

GPS asset tracking can be invaluable for thwarting theft attempts against your company’s assets. With GPS tracking data, you can pinpoint the location of a stolen asset in seconds. This allows the authorities to catch the thieves quickly—vastly improving your odds of getting the asset back intact.

When tagging an asset with a GPS system, it’s important to consider a few things:

1. Is the Asset Independently Powered? If the asset has its own power supply or generates electricity when in use (such as a car or computer might), you may want to use a GPS tracking unit that can tie into the asset’s power supply to keep the GPS tracker powered. For assets that don’t have a power supply, you’ll have to use a battery-powered GPS—which limits total operating time and frequency of updates.
2. Placement of the Tracker. Thieves are getting wise to the use of GPS tracking as an antitheft tool. Some savvier thieves may try to find and remove any GPS trackers during the theft. When placing a GPS tracker, it’s important to either make the tracker hard to find or make it so that tampering with the tracker disables the asset and/or sets off an immediate alert. For example, some GPS trackers can disable a vehicle’s starter.
3. Frequency of Position Updates. For battery-powered GPS units, balancing the need to get frequent position updates with the need to conserve battery power can be tricky. The more often a device updates, the more recent and useful the position data—but the faster the battery will drain.

When using GPS to protect assets from theft, considering the above list can help you make more effective use of your GPS trackers.

Proactively Managing Asset Use

Aside from tracking an asset’s current position, many GPS units can be used to track how that asset is used. This is often useful for powered assets such as generators, construction equipment, refrigerated trailers, and the like.

As long as the asset has an onboard set of sensors that the GPS tracker can be plugged into (and most modern vehicles, generators, and other heavy equipment do have onboard diagnostic systems), remotely monitoring the asset is easy.

Having data such as time of activation, duration of use, internal temperatures, fuel consumption, and more allows you to see how efficiently the asset is being used. For example, if heavy equipment is left idle, you might see prolonged active times, but low operating temperatures and motor RPMs. Armed with this info, you can address the issue and avoid further waste of fuel on excessive idle time.

Or, say you’re operating a fleet of refrigerated trailers. By tying your GPS tracking system into the onboard temperature and power monitors of a trailer, you can easily spot when there’s a refrigeration failure or loss of power to the trailer—enabling fast response to a reefer truck failure.

GPS systems, when tied into an asset’s onboard diagnostics sensors, can make it much easier to remotely manage that asset.

Be Proactive with GPS!

One of the most important aspects of using GPS tracking for your high-value assets is that it can give you information much faster than waiting on a manually generated report. Even better, GPS trackers don’t lie, and they don’t fudge the numbers.

With the speed and accuracy of GPS data, you can take proactive measures to control your assets in the field; which leads to greater efficiency and effectiveness.

Learn how your business can use GPS tracking for its assets today!