GPS Tracking ROI

Every single business that has one or more vehicles on the road can profit from GPS Tracking.  That’s just an open and shut case.  There’s 760 more articles on this site that give you the reasons, and alot more evidence on line and off that offer’s solid proof.

But some businesses can also profit from using an air miles radius map.  You can learn more about these specialized profit-making maps on our sister site.  you can also see:

There are a number of reasons you might need an air mile radius map to keep your business legal, more efficient, or both.  A primary reason for many clients are the FMCSA (Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration) rules regarding driver hours of service rules.  I’ve written about them before and I’ll likely write more, but here’s a very useful site I found that explains a lot more than I’ll ever know:

Trucking Compliance, LLC™ is a small business helping small trucking companies to startup, grow, and stay legal. Nothing fancy. Just an easy, direct way for people to start their own trucking or motorcoach businesses.

OUR MISSION is to help you Get Your Federal OPERATING AUTHORITY, establish and maintain required DOCUMENTATION, PASS Federal Inspections, and KEEP MORE of the MONEY that YOU EARN.

Richard Dowdell is the founder and brains behind this site which is what we “Web guru” guys call a “very tightly niched” business.  90% or more of the traffic online just ebbs and flows from site to site, reading little and absorbing less, looking for the next free ring tone or whatever else the trend of the day is … but included in the either 10% are the people making American work.

A huge percentage of the ‘work’ involves wheels in one way or another, and if there are wheels involved there’s an excellent chance state or federal government is involved.  You know what that means.  paperwork on top of paperwork …. and after you have it all complete, you really don’t know if you even used the right forms for sure.

That’s Trucking Compliance’s “narrow” but important niche … keeping vehicles on the road legally so that commerce can flow.  I’m not even in the transportation business directly and I already have learned from Richard’s site … you will too.

One name for the particular sub-nbiche of trucking that can make good use of air miles radius maps in often defined as short haul operations … as opposed to the more common lomg haul category of trucking.  But for sure, both “niches” can certainly improve their bottom line wiht GPS tracking.

Several weeks back I reported on an article which raised the question, could employee tracking via GPS be responsible for suicide?  Is it really that wrong and invasive?  Well regular readers know that I focus on the positive aspects of GPS Tracking for Business ROI and it is easy to prove that GPS employee tracking is one of the best financial investments a business can make.  Most importantly in today’s tight economic times and high fuel prices.

And as I reported in the original GPS as a Killer article, employees have no right or expectation of privacy when they are taking someone’s money, ostensibly to work.  I do know, from looking for what people search for here on www.satviz.com, the site about using GPS tracking for profit that there are a lot of crooked employees out there.  For every search that asks about the benefits of GPS tracking there are at least a dozen asking about defeating GPS tracking.  Well, I have news for the ‘defeatists” … I’m pro tracking and intend to stay that way.

Getting back to the article, one of the most astounding claims is that the fact that Telstra, a larger telecommunications provider, tracked their field employee’s vehicles as they went about their jobs and this caused an employee so much stress he committed suicide.  A number of folks seem to have taken up the cause that the company’s “excessive surveillance” led directly up to Mr. Dousset’s unfortunate death.  let’s look at what seems to be “excessive”:

One such tracker, the GoFinder Reporter, sends employers detailed daily time sheets showing every stop made, parked time, driving time, distance covered, maximum speed and even an estimate of the amount of fuel used. Each location can be displayed on a street map or Google Earth.

OK, let’s talk about “excessive” here.  Telco technicians sent to the field are hardly low-rate workers.  It takes quite a bit of skill to be able to perform that work, not to mention an easy $200,000 USD investment per service truck.  Now in addition to what seems to be the basic fact that any employer should be allowed to monitor such an investment, consider this:

• I have installed hundreds and hundreds of tracking units.  I have yet to find a single case where employers did not find significant “time stealing”.  Even an (honest) union should not be able to argue that the employee owes a days work for a day’s pay.  Certainly if the employer was cheating the workers they would be on the employer instantly, as would only be right.  Employment is a two-way street, is it not?  The law and basic fairness dictates neither side should cheat the other.
• For every case where an employer found a worker where he isn’t supposed to be I can cite you a offsetting case where the employee was accused of wrong doing, perhaps by an angry customer, and was proved to be doing his job correctly by GPS tracking.  More than one employee has been saved from actual legal liability by proving, via GPS tracking, s/he was not in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Good workers are proud to show off their work.
• Many field employees have to cover a lot of ground.  What happens if they are in an accident, victim of a crime, mechanical breakdown, etc.?  isn’t a means to keep them safer in their day-to-day rounds worth something?  It’s perfectly logical to look at this as a safety service the employer provides.  Don’t the workers in this case have to wear little hard hats, seat belts, safety shoes and such provided by the employer?  Why doesn’t the union complain about that?  Because it would be stupid to put free choice of hazardous actions in lace of on the job safety, that’s why.

Business owners can also log on to a website to view the current position of any of their vehicles at five-minute intervals.

Privacy experts and unions say employers need good justification for snooping so closely on employee movements and even then do not require such highly detailed reports. They question whether employers switch off the tracking outside work hours.

• Let me get this straight.  It is excessive ‘snooping’ to insure that vehicles the employer provides for work are only being used for work?  If someone came to me back when I was a federal supervisor, I would have referred the guy immediately for drug testing.  What are these guys smoking?  The employer buys the vehicle, maintains it. \, licenses it, insures it, and (big thing today) fuels it, and it is an invasion of privacy that the owner be able to protect his vehicles from abuse?  Wow.

There are a couple other giant lapses of logic in this article that I’ll write more about son.  meantime, if you are a business owner, a fleet or operations manager, as government manager or supervisor, listen up!

Regardless of what the talking heads on TV tell you, there has never been a better time to invest in GPS Tracking for Fleet ROI.  You will save, immediately, labor hours, fuel and vehicle maintenance.  Absolutely.  And lose the idea that managing your business is show how snooping or an invasion of privacy.  It is, indeed, your responsibility to manage and you can’t manage what you can’t measure.

I don’t often run straight ads here in the strongGPS ROI Tracking/strong blog; But this deal winds up in a couple days and it is particularly good for many potential customers out there,

These units are self-contained (they are powered by a battery which will last several years … they will, I know, I’ve used their products) and installation can’t be much simpler … peel and stick.

The tracking application is web based, dirt simple to operate and requires nothing more at your end than a computer with Internet access.

In addition, these units work nearly world-wide … you aren’t limited to cell phone coverage, nor are you stymied at most border crossing the way some systems trip you up.

At at a 20% discount in quantities as low as 5 each, how much better deal are you waiting for?  ; Recommended:

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Here’s an excerpt from a news article that I feel deserves a lot of comment and explanation.  As regular readers know (and if you aren’t a regular reader, why don’t you subscribe to GPS Tracking ROI’s syndication feed or subscribe to receive GPS Tracking ROI direct to your email inbox) so you don’t miss an article) I often take a news article and make a daily blog post from it, but the one in question covers so much ground I think I’ll make several different articles from it.  My thanks to a very good writer, Asher Moses of Stuff.cp.nz

GPS tracking can ‘drive employees over edge’

By ASHER MOSES - SMH | Friday, 12 September 2008

… In March last year, Leon Dousset, a Telstra technician for 32 years, committed suicide. Friends and family told Four Corners this was due to Telstra’s stringent performance targets and the installation of the GPS trackers.

Colleague John Hitchiner, a former Telstra linesman, told the program Dousset had said he felt the GPS devices were “demeaning” to staff and showed a “lack of trust on the part of the company”.

Four Corners also published a letter from Dousset’s doctor which read: “I have been looking after Leon who had been suffering depression related to stresses at work. He never mentioned any problems at home but did tell me he was upset at finally being forced to have a GPS in his work vehicle to track his movements. Unfortunately he committed suicide as a result of his severe depression.”

Telstra said it was not aware of Dousset’s condition…

First of all very few of my readers are from New Zealand, but I encourage you to read an give some thought to the whole article.  It’s virtually 100% applicable to business in almost any country.  Moses makes so very good points, provides a lot of good information, and mistakes or glosses over a few things … That’s what I’m here for *smile*.

The title comes from the next paragraph beyond the snippet I quoted above as a comment from a principal in the company who supplied the GPS Tracking system which is alleged to have contributed to Mr. Dousset’s regrettable death.  I second Mr. Thomas’s view wholeheartedly.

One of the reasons I said the article was as applicable to US readers as to those from New Zealand is that the Kiwis seem to have adopted the current sad state of affairs in my native US.  The “blame” mentality.  When any sad event occurs it just has to be someone else’s fault.  It’s certainly a tragic thing that Mr. Dousset chose to end his life by his own hand … but the fact is, it was Mr. Dousset’s decision to do so.  Sorry to have to call a spade a spade, but he did it.  GPS tracking didn’t do it, the equipment supplier didn’t do it, the employer didn’t do it … he did it.  Might as well blame the sun coming up on the morning of the man’s death … after all, that may have distressed him also.

GPS tracking is a legal, intelligent and demonstrably successful tool of business.  For every person who claims it “demeans” an employee or “invades his privacy” (you mean when a person hires on his activities in support of his employer are secret?), GPS tracking provides a positive bottom line ROI for the companies smart enough to use it, GPS tracking enhances employee safety (I personally have been involved in saving lives using GPS tracking) and it rewards and confirms the good deeds of the best employees while highlighting the improper actions of the few miscreants.

To publish the article in the tone in which it is written is certainly a bit on the sensational side … and that’s why I’ll be writing more of a more balanced review of the issues.  Stay tuned.

Even though I am no longer a dealer for the Geotab’s’ line of GPS tracking products (I retired several years ago), I keep close tabs on the company and I always like to know of their successes.  They are great people and I highly recommend their product line, end-to-end.

If there has been a weak link in their live product line, it has been using multiple bandwidth providers in Canada, the US and Mexico.  It isn’t all that unusual for companies to send trucks across the borders, and it’s even more important, in someways, to track international vehicle movements than ones that never leave their home country.  For one reason, border crossing times can vary widely and smart operators will build this into their costs and pricing … provided they have a way to collect the data.  You can’t manage what you can’t measure.

As a wireless carrier that is focused on the transportation business,
including over a decade of expertise in supporting fleet management and
vehicle tracking solutions, GeoTab's GO LIVE product line now includes an
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status.  GeoTab's' system incorporates data checks between the GO LIVE device
and the customer's database to ensure that data is never lost. With coverage
that spans from Canada into Mexico, Aeris's network allows companies with
fleet vehicles to monitor where and when they use fuel to conduct business,
deliveries, and services across North America in real-time.

Using Aeris's enhanced customer portal, AerPort, Geotab's' can provide
customers with immediate access to all aspects of their wireless
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management, network performance, billing details and customer support ...

Read more about GPS Tracking here.

Just a week or so I posted what seemed to be very good news about GPS Tracking … units are now available in the familiar Pep Boys chain.

Today, I see some even better news here:

LandAirSea Systems, Inc. has announced that it has begun distributing its GPS Tracking Key to NAPA automotive dealers across the country.

NAPA has been a long time supplier of replacement parts, accessories and service items to the automotive repair industry, and NAPA reps say the Tracking Key will be a profitable addition to their inventory.
The GPS Tracking Key is a small, pocket-size device that receives signals from the 24 Department of Defense satellites orbiting the earth. 

Its internal computer determines the GPS location of a vehicle and records detailed travel activities such as times of departure, routes traveled, speed of vehicle and duration of stops. The recorded data can then be displayed with Google Earth over a street map, satellite images or in a text report. 

Among the growing list of consumers for this device are parents of teenage drivers who have found it to be a helpful tool in keeping track of their teens’ whereabouts. By making the GPS Tracking Key available to its customers, NAPA is hoping to attract this most recent category of buyer.

For more information, visit www.landairsea.com.

LandSeaAir is a supporter of www.satviz.com, the GPS ROI blog … we have written about LandSeaAir  before.  But this news is good news without any sponsor contribution.  The GPS Tracking system is something every business needs and systems have been too hard to find and made too "mysterious" to the average business owner.  Putting them into the hands of consumer-related stores is an important step to market penetration and helping every business owner benefit from saving money with GPS tracking.

There’s two great pieces of news hidden in this press release.  I get a lot of them across my desk every day that don’t seem to mean much, but every now and then there’s a gem.

By Calvin Azuri TMCnet Contributing Editor

Zoombak (News - Alert), manufacturer of Assisted Global Positioning System (A-GPS) locators, has announced the availability of its new product, the Universal A-GPS Locator, through Pep Boys outlets around the country. The product has been shipped to 591 Pep Boys locations nationwide, and company officials expect good movement for the product in the back-to-school buying season.

The Universal A-GPS Locator weighs about 2 1/2 pounds, and can be placed on bicycles or in backpacks and other such objects, which need to be tracked. The company also manufactures specific purpose A-GPS locators, called the A-GPS Car Locator and the A-GPS Pet Locator. The Universal A-GPS Locator can also be used in place of these to track cars and pets.

A-GPS devices use both GPS satellites, as well as an assistance server connected with the device, through the cellular network to ascertain the location of the device. This helps in getting a fix on the location even in places where the satellite signal reception may be poor, such as within buildings or around tall structures.  Full article here.

For way too many years now the GPS tracking industry has been hiding it’s light under a bushel … or perhaps it would be more accurate to say hiding themselves behind price and availability mystery. 

Fact is, tracking your vehicles for safety and profit just isn’t that hard … and actually doesn’t cost anything … it will pay for itself in a couple months, easily.

Also, the majority of manufacturers out there today have a dirty little secret.  They build units based around a single GPS-only receiver chip.  This is not the way to go for the future, as GPS on it’s own can not cope with things like a car driving into a parking garage, or let’s’ say taxis driving continually in a downtown "urban canyon" area.

The truth is, "plain vanilla" GPS just doesn’t work properly in many conditions and the majority of companies out there are still trying to ‘feed’ the consumer the left-over unassisted GPS receivers that will frustrate the user, but line the pockets of the guys who manage to unload tem.

Assisted GPS (A-GPS) … which means the units use the cellular phone network in addition to GPS satellites to calculate their position … is the only thing you should buy today … yes you read it here, "Mr. GPS" says so.  Units that cost 10 times the price of these Zoombak units can not come close to their accuracy in difficult reception areas and the sad  thing is, many people in the GPS tracking business aren’t crooks … they just do not understand what they are selling.  A-GPS is the only way to go and now that you can buy units for a very reasonable price and get them installed while your trucks are in for an oil change, there’s even less reason to delay.  Be like Nike and just Do It … Mr. GPS assures you that you’ll be glad you did,

Of course, if you aren’t located near a PepBoys store you can still take advantage of this great system.  Keep tabs on your children, your pets, your spouse and your employees … Zoombak Advanced GPS Car & Family Locator (Model# ZMBK200)