How Fleet Visibility Improves Productivity

By Brian Albright, Field Technologies magazine

Eggleton Trucking has added up to four loads per week using GPS-based fleet tracking.

Eggleton Trucking’s roots stretch back to the 1940s, when owner Dan Eggleton’s father launched his own trucking business. While the trucks have changed a lot since then, one thing hasn’t: Like his father, Eggleton spent a lot of time on the phone, calling drivers to find out where they are, whether the trucks were loaded or unloaded, and how long it was going to take them to get to their next stop. At any given point in the day, Eggleton had to manually track his fleet status using outdated and sometimes inaccurate information.

Eggleton Trucking hauls bulk commodities throughout southern California. The eight 18-wheelers that make up Eggleton’s fleet average 100 to 110 loads of material per week. “I did all the dispatching myself over the phone,” Eggleton says. “I usually had a good idea of where the trucks should be, but all of our tracking was basically by the seat of the pants.”