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Take Advantage Of GPS Fleet Tracking

February 5, 2008

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White Paper: Take Advantage Of GPS Fleet Tracking

What if instead of following their assigned delivery routes, some of your fleet drivers were taking a ‘break' together at a strip club during working hours? Would you know? According to Wayne Johnson, VP of sales and marketing for Discrete Wireless, that's a true story that he heard from a client, and it's likely there are plenty of similar ones detailing lost productivity from a lack of vehicle tracking systems. The answer to this problem is GPS vehicle tracking and fleet management solutions from companies such as Discrete Wireless, FleetPoint, and Universal Tracking Technologies. But these kinds of solutions can do more for your company than just improve employee productivity; they also can reduce operating expenses and improve your customer service. But first, you should understand how a GPS fleet tracking system works.

Obviously, for a GPS fleet tracking system, you need a GPS receiver. "These units, which are usually equipped with both GPS and wireless radio antennas, receive time code information from the GPS satellite network and translate that information into a 3-D location along the surface of the earth," explains Johnson. "Location information is then delivered to a company's database in either real time, via wireless download, or via manual [i.e. USB stick] download." How that information is used depends upon the chosen tracking software application and the integration of the GPS unit. For instance, aside from showing where on a map a particular vehicle is located, a fleet manager can review reports detailing a vehicle's speeds, headings, stops, and time idling. In fact, a fleet manager could even be automatically notified via e-mail if any key performance indicators exceed acceptable levels. And those indicators don't always have to do with a vehicle's operating levels. "Recently $36,000 of unbaked pizza dough in a truck was saved when a temperature sensor inside the truck was triggered, which automatically sent an e-mail to the customer detailing that the truck's freezer was no longer keeping the air below 10 degrees. The truck was quickly rerouted to meet up with a new truck in order to transfer the inventory," explains Johnson.

Click Here To Download:
White Paper: Take Advantage Of GPS Fleet Tracking

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