GPS Tracking Truth Is Often Stranger Than Fiction
I often watch scenes in movies where law enforcement uses fantastic, fake capabilities to track suspects via their cell phones or some other supposed GPS-enabled device. Frankly, these scenes are often good for a laugh be doesn’t quite work the way Hollywood thinks it does.
However, even without the glitz and over-wrought claims, GPS Tracking could prevent an aweful lot of crime if businesses only paid attention to loss prevention.
Owners, I have news for you. It’s very likely you are being robbed. I know, seems like a rash statement, and who am I, and outsider to pass judgement?
Well, I’m a guy who has installed thousands of units on government and commercial vehicles and done analysises with hundreds of business owners … and I haven’t seen it all, but I’ve seen plenty.
Just afew days ago I watched a segment of the Fox Crime network Masterminds’ show. Tis particular story was about a fellow who worked as an airfreight delivery driver in Toronto and was personally responsible for stealing over $30 million in prperty over about 11 years.
The police and the insurance companies involved knew approximately where the goods were disappearing from but they never could find out where they were being taken.
The criminal’s operation was quite complex … after all, he was classed as a mastermind … but he had one achilles heel similar to many of these ‘product diversion’ type schemes that could have been found in a "new York minute" and would have saved, conservatively, 10,000 times the amount of loss that eventually occurred. 10,000 times? Oh yes, for sure.
As with most of these schemes the perpetrator set up several clandestine locations where he could store the stolen merchandise. he would stop, almost each and every day at one or more of his hidden warehouses and take product off his truck for later clandestine sales. A simple, $300 or so "post mission" (zero cost per month) recorder on the freight company’s trucks would have found the unauthorized stops in the first week they happened. Bingo. Crime averted, loss prevented. A $300 unit to save the loss of $30,000,000.
In most of the world’s countries inurance companies already don’t allow losses to mount up as they do in the US and Canada. You have to have GPS tracking on a truck to register the vehicle in brazil, for example. In Suth Africa you cna’t get theft insurance on a vehicle withourt a tracker. This saves the insurance company money, saves the owner money, and saves a fortune in tax money that would be spent by police tracking stolen vehicles. Do North American insurance companies enjoy losisses? You’d almost get the idea they do, when the means to save are so cost effective.
But your own business ought to be smart and save costs without even bringing you insurance carrier into the picture. fter all, you cna’t insuire profits, you have to make them on your own.
Small Spend Equals Big GPS ROI - ELHC
It’s an industry where miles and minutes are king.
"It’s a game of pennies," said Jeff Berlin, executive vice president and chief financial officer of E.L. Hollingsworth & Co., a Flint-based trucking firm. "It’s a game of cents per mile."
And the roughly 30 dispatchers who work around the clock for the trucking company now have a high-tech center. They track and monitor 420 trailers and nearly 300 trucks for the company and its customers, primarily in the automotive industry.
The new $70,000 renovation — featuring a tiered design, open room and 6- by 4-foot screens and 50-inch plasma TVs — is a far cry from the cubicles where they used to work.
The dispatch center, which was garage space, features screens that show such things as a weather map; views of the company’s truck yards in Flint, Burton, Dearborn and Lebanon, Tenn. … and one that alerts dispatchers of drivers who may be getting close to U.S. Department of Transportation limits for driving hours.
Another screen, a large U.S. map, shows dispatchers where drivers are. Color-coded dots indicate if they are running on time or behind schedule or are empty and available to pick up freight.
"I’ll put that up against anything in the state of Michigan right now," Berlin said. "There’s just a lot of technology in trucking these days."
The company said the dispatch center gives the company a competitive advantage and helps them provide exceptional service. You can read the source for the original Flint Journal via Michigan Live write up here:
I really thought an article this interesting deserved a picture or two so I wrote to Mr. Berlin of Hollingsworth & Co. and he was kind enough to provide a few and answer some important questions. I appreciate the assistance.
What he couldn’t really answer and what I can’t as well 
is actually why this article is so newsworthy. The GPS tracking system that E. L. Hollingsworth & Co. uses, the Qualcomm Omnitracs is an excellent, industry-standard tool, but it’s not new … the large white Qualcomm "bubbles" have been a frequent site on US highways for at least 12 or 14 years now.
But companies willing to spend what amounts to, le’s face it, the cost of a cargo trailers or two to put the Qualcomm and the rest of their business IT investment to use by all areas of the company are still few and far between.
Even more rare are the companies who do make smart use of the technology who take the time to get their innovation out into public view, so that prospective drivers, potential shippers and the general public learn just a bit about how far trucking has come and how far it is going to go forward in the coming years.
Does your company already make smart use of their existing technology? Do your prime customers use it, as Hollingsworth’s do, to get a better bank for their buck (and cement the idea they are dealing with an industry leader)?
I make a tip of the GPS ROI blog hat to ELHC and offer a challenge to anyone doing something equal or better … let me know, I’d love to write about your work too.
Is England Smarter Than France? You Be The Judge
From the current C|Net news, and interesting article that proves governments can, at least some of the time, come to their senses:
A committee of Parliament members has called for a full review of the U.K.’s involvement in the European Galileo satellite-network project.
In a statement released on Monday, Gwyneth Dunwoody, chairperson of the Transport Sub-Committee in Parliament, said that it would be “folly” for the U.K. to pursue the project until a review is completed.
The cost of Galileo was planned to be $4.38 billion but the Transport Sub-Committee believes that this could spiral to $20.73 billion.
The European Commission “is poised to spend billions in taxpayers’ money on a satellite system, without any realistic assessment of its costs and benefits,” Dunwoody said. “We must have independent and up-to-date evidence that proceeding with Galileo is worthwhile.”…
Indeed! Welcome to planet Earth, Ms. Dunwoody, the rest of us have been here all along. I’ve written a number of times (here, here and here for a few samples) about the insanity of the Galileo project and the way my mind is boggled at how people way more educated than I and way more experienced in business and government than I can not seem to make the most rudimentary cost/benefit analysis.
How To GPS and How Not To GPS
Two news items from the same city today that pretty much tell the story of the right way and the wrong way to use GPS tracking technology to get an ROI in you business or government agency. Here’s two examples of
How To:
NYC school buses on track to get GPS technology
NEW YORK (AP) _ The city plans to put global positioning technology in school buses in an effort to do better at keeping the sprawling bus system on track.
The city Department of Education plans to ask companies this winter to submit proposals for installation of GPS devices, said Margie Feinberg, a spokeswoman for the department.The devices could help shape routes and flag chronically late buses. And they could help settle disputes between parents who say a bus didn’t show up and drivers who say it did.
A drivers’ union trustee, Tommy Mullins, says the tracking technology can be useful if it’s not used intrusively. A School Bus Contractors Association spokeswoman says it could help fix scheduling problems….
And How Not To:
NYC Cabbies Lose Court Battle Over GPS
By LARRY NEUMEISTER – 4 hours ago
NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge refused Friday to block a new city rule that requires taxi drivers to install global positioning systems and credit card machines in their cabs by Monday.
The drivers argue that the city overstepped its authority and acted unconstitutionally when it mandated the units. Their lawsuit also claims GPS will give away trade secrets by disclosing the cabbies’ driving patterns, which they say give them a competitive edge.
U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman refused to block the rule from taking effect, saying the use of the technology to improve taxi service appeared to outweigh drivers’ privacy rights. He urged the two sides to negotiate and set the next hearing for Oct. 10….
GPS ROI Eye Candy — Savings On The Map
You know I like Microsoft MapPoint. It’s a tool of a thousand uses for business. One of the standard tasks any business with vehicles on the road has to face is called, in mathematics, the “Traveling Salesman Problem”. Give a driver a list of places to visit and figure out the shortest, quickest (or both) order to visit them.
I made up a little example that “maps” very well to real-world tasks. Suppose you are running the “white fleet” for a school district and you have to send a technician out to visit every middle school in your district, as soon as possible, and the tech has to spend 45 minutes at each school, except one special case that only needs 30 minutes.
Using MapPoint we can easily enter the school locations from a spreadsheet, text file or a simple point and click for each location. here’s the proposed route map I got by just entering the schools off the district’s lost:
Note the numbers:
First Cut: Entered from the District roster: 46.7 miles, 8 hours 11 minutes … 11 Minutes OT
Not only does our route look a little ragged, but we are already planning overtime. In many government organizations a supervisor can’t even schedule for overtime without high-level approval/budgeting. And for sure, no business wants to schedule OT when it can be avoided. And days have away of getting longer due to circumstances … this schedule is too darn tight.
With one click I tell MapPoint to optimize the route.
MapPoint Optimized: No constraints: 31.8 miles 7 hours 38 minutes.
Not a bad rate of return, eh? Took 15 seconds and saved 14 miles on this little “within one school district’ task, a savings of 30% or at least $6 or $7 in just one day. About 260 work days per year means this one software tool could easily save you $1500 a year … if you have on one employee to route. Not only that … notice no overtime and 20 minute “leeway” built into the technician’s day to accommodate the unplanned issues that will always come up. Same time on the job, just that much savings in windshield” time.
To prove a point let’s throw in one more ’sure to happen” diversion. The principal of the optimized last school on the 
list calls and insists the tech come to her school first, since it has less work time. Now, quick, can you accommodate her wishes without breaking the budget?
One mouse drag to move her school to the top of the list and one “Get Directions” click and MapPoint has the answer:
Accommodate Special request: 32.7 miles 7 hours 39 minutes.
Running the route so that her school is first only adds a mile and a minute or so. No seriously, how long would it have taken you to figure that in your head? And would you have modified the route the way MapPoint did, or just run it in reverse?
Much easier to answer these questions with a tool, isn’t it? Talk to me if you want to know more about MapPoint … it’s a money making tool.
As always, I welcome comments, disagreement is encouraged, and you can also email me direct at: davestarr (at) gmail (dot) com or call me on 1-719-423-8872. If you liked this article, please subscribe to my RSS feed so you get all my news and views.
GPS Tracking ROI Is Not Just About Saving Money
I’ve written before about the interesting positive “side effects” (fortuitous circumstances) that so often come along when a company invests in GPS tracking for the initial purpose of saving money. There is no doubt that using GPS tracking will save you money. In fact, no matter what you select you will likely see a return on investment in 6 months or less. I’ve got years of experience to show that and there are thousands of other professionals in the field who can testify to that fact as well.
But what if GPS tracking actually made you money? Think that’s far fetched? It’s not at all. here’s real-world testimony from a trucking company operations exec … not a GPS salesman, marketer or any other third-party ‘expert”:
Tracking Customer Service With GPS For Proven Profit
Free money. If you service or repair at customer locations this could very well be free or found money.
Are You Late in Completing Service Work-Orders?
A recent Aberdeen survey revealed that companies do not complete nearly 21% of work orders on-time. Lack of insight into near and long term service workload and resource (people, parts) capacity resulting from poor planning and forecasting
is to blame for the sub-optimal service performance.Please take a 10-minute survey to:
Benchmark financial and operational service
metrics relative to peers; andCompare how your service organization’s
business processes stack up against those
of best-in-class companiesLearn what your peers are doing to reduce technician overtime and fulfill service commitments on time
The Aberdeen group provides one heck of a lot of good information to business owners and marketers. One of the things I find especially fascinating is how hard they hit the service side of industry. that’s because they, as I have found by personal experience, find that most businesses spend a ton of money, often losing big to fulfill service commitments which could actually be a big profit center if managed correctly. The report is free, I am sure you’ll more than get you money’s worth.
And for my institutional, school and government readers? Not so fast, you need to read the report too. How much do you spend in tasks involving employees going out to sties to fix things, install things, adjust things? (School system White Fleets come immediately to mind) Just because you’re not a profit-making entity doesn’t mean you should be reducing costs and using scare money in better places … while:
Improving customer service!
As always, I welcome comments, disagreement is encouraged, and you can also email me direct at: davestarr (at) gmail (dot) com or call me on 1-719-423-8872. If you liked this article, please subscribe to my RSS feed so you get all my news and views.