GPS Tracking ROI

Earlier this month I posted several hints to keep you legal if you operate commercial vehicles under the so-called “short haul” exemptions from the standard FMCSA (Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration) HOS (Hours Of Service) or RODS (Record Of Duty Status) (log book) requirements. Wow! How’s that for an acronym-loaded sentence … do you think we have enough rules about trucking in the US, yet?

Anyway, to keep “in bounds” with the mileage restrictions on the local driving issues you only need a simple radios map centered on the place your vehicles will be departing and returning to. I detailed how you can make one quite simply with Microsoft MapPoint. But MapPoint has another very interesting similar function. It allows you to draw a “Drive Time Zone” around any point on the map in virtually a one-click operations. Very, very handy for business planning.

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I’ve used the premise many times that one of the bona fide paybacks (ROI) of using GPS tracking on your business vehicles is being able to know that you’re complying with the US FMCSA (Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration) regulations. The ones regarding HOS (Hours Of Service) for drivers are particularly complex … and thus easy to run afoul of … and enforcement agencies, including State Police are usually well-trained in those laws and quite interested in enforcing them, both from a legal/moral and a financial standpoint. Catch an individual private driver speeding and the state earns a few bucks from the ticket, catch a trucking company in major violations and huge amounts can flow into the sate coffers.

Every one of the 50 states has their own rulers in addition to the Federal rules and you, the business owner is responsible for compliance. I can’t possibly dig them all out for you but the easy part of the task is that the state rules can’t be more lenient than the Federal regs and in most cases are very much a copy.

First you have to understand who is subject to the Motor carrier rules. It is not just the big over-the-road trucker. Those guys are the ones almost all of us think of when Hours Of Service and logbook (RODS — Records Of Duty Status) get mentioned but they are far from the only folks subject to compliance and possible penalties.

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Everything on the ‘Net is about niches. One subject is dull and boring (a speciality of mine?) and another subject clicks … who can say? But what people search for and read about, I write about.

I’ve mentioned the 100 and 150 air mile radius rules for “local” commercial vehicle operations a number of times … here, here, and here for a few of the more interesting entries. The basics are that commercial, goods carrying vehicles that do not require their drivers to have CDL’s (Commercial Driver Licenses) are still subject to many FMCSA (Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration) rules regarding hours of service (HOS) and record-keeping requirements. Depending on several provisions of the law, businesses whose vehicles operate within 100 Air miles of the location where the vehicles regularly return, or 150 Air miles have rules different than the rules for all other commercial vehicles and drivers. These regulations are not road miles, read from vehicle odometers (thank goodness, more on that fallacy here) but should be measured by a radius drawn on a map. How does the average business get a map like this? Well, they can ask me, and I’ll furnish an electronic version, free … no links, no obligation … or they can buy Microsoft’s MapPoint, a tool I feel a business shouldn’t be without … 100 mile rule or no 100 mile rule.

How To Make a Radius Map With MapPoint

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Part 1:Why GPS?

Trying to figure out where you are and where you’re going is probably one of man’s oldest pastimes.

Navigation and positioning are crucial to so many activities and yet the process has always been quite cumbersome.

Over the years all kinds of technologies have tried to simplify the task but every one has had some disadvantage … Read the excellent Trimble tutorials here:

GPS is already sufficiently ingrained into our consciousness that many think it has been around forever. Especially since so many have the overt or covert thought that it is somehow part of the secret “black” world of spy programs (if, indeed, there be any) or somehow serves some hidden government spying agenda, I thought it might be illuminating to bring out some of the basics and the reasoning behind them.

Trimble Navigation Limited, on whose excellent website I relied upon heavily for this series, is a world leader in this still exciting technology, but the system itself and the reasons behind GPS go way back beyond Trimble’s time … and the reasons were certainly not always commercial.

Over the years man relied on a lot of methods and systems to find his way … for commercial reasons (Columbus, anyone?) to make war, or to map and establish ownership of land, the spoils of war. Hmmm, didn’t even think about how often “war” entered into the picture until I started to write this, but yes, war, or the hopeful prevention of war, was one of the main reasons GPS was developed.

In order to fight a war or to prevent others from feeling they can successfully attack you, you need to know where you and your forces are, and where the enemy is. There are a lot of systems out there that tell us something about where real or potential enemies are, but GPS is not one of them. GPS tracks no one and “spies” on no one. Of course GPS makes it more possible to track people or things, and some types of such tracking may be considered spying … but let’s clear the air and understand that whatever “spying” is being done, it’s not GPS that is doing it.

GPS’s only real role in life is to be a clock. More precisely a constellation of high-accuracy clocks orbiting the earth in precise orbits and being constantly updated by even higher-precision clocks on the ground. This makes it about as benign a government system as exists or ever existed, one certainly doesn’t think of the “city fathers” as “spying” when they put up a clock on top of the old town hall, right? They are just trying to help out the citizens by telling them the time and believe me, that’s basically all that GPS does.

Time has always been of great importance to navigation, positioning and knowing your location … tomorrow we’ll look at the systems that preceded GPS and a little about their relationship to time … and you may, like me, become fascinated with the precision and basic architectural simplicity of GPS.

Many times you have seen me mention Geographic Information Systems (BIS) here on the GSP Tracking blog.  The simplest explanation of a GIS is the programmatic connection between a map and a database.  But even what us geeks tend to think as simple is not as simple as it should e to folks whose area of expertise is elsewhere.

Roving around on www.wordpress.com the other day … the home of the excellent folks who produce the blogging software I use. WordPress, I found a user’s blog called “strange maps”.

Strange Maps indeed.  You can’t read the print very well here but if you click on the link you’ll see it’s  a map of the United States, something most people are quite familiar with, combined with the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the 50 richest countries in the world.

Without a map or visual aid the columns of GDP would just be meaningless numbers to all but economists.  Plot the “faceless” numbers onto something familiar like  a map of the States and wow … did you know that California is as rich as France?  Did you know my adopted home, the Philippines has a GDP equal to Oklahoma and all those oil wells?

Go spend a little time at Strange Maps and look round.  You’ll learn a few things about the United States and many other countries as well … and when you’re done looking?  You have a good grasp of the kinds of things you can do with a GIS as well.

And stop an think of what day it is today … 14 June.  It’s very fashionable for many, even I’m sorry to say some of my fellow Americans, to forget what that national ensign that we honor today really stands for and what so many gave up and went through to keep it flying.  It’s worth a thought, or even a prayer of thanks, no matter what your current nationality and role in life.

Don’t get a headache, it’s a trick question you already know the answer to … easy, actually.  The correct answer is, none, nothing, nada, zilch, don’t got none, never done it, never will.  In spite of everything we seem to read, watch on TV and see in the movies understanding the overall technology will be a lot easier if you just remember one essential fact … GPS does not track ANYTHING!

GPS satellites send out a precise timing signal that enables a GPS receiver to calculate the distance (as a function of time) from each satellite.  Once the receiver has a “good enough” signal from at least four “birds”, the receiver then knows where it is in three dimensional space.  That is what the GPS system … the “Space Segment” (the satellites on orbit around the earth) the Ground Segment (the monitor and control stations spread around the globe) and the Control Segment (the dedicated folks out at Schriever AFB on the barren plains of Colorado) delivers to a user.  “Only this and nothing more” quoth the Raven. (actually it was the Raven’s host who said that but this is about GPS, not poetry)

Once the GPS receiver knows where it is, you can track the receiver’s location by somehow sending the coordinates over some sort of comm system … but you can’t “tap into” the GPS system and “see” where anyone or anything is.  GPS “tracks” nothing.  Why am I being so pedantic about this?  Easy, because the number one problem I’ve seen in working with tracking systems over the past 10 years or so is unrealistic user expectations.

GPS actually performs technological near-miracles every second of the day, but if you want to use GPS to track your commercial fleet, tell passengers when the next bus is due, find out where your teenager is and how fast he’s driving or even get directions to a restaurant, you have to:

• Understand the basics of what the system is
• Know something about the _other_ systems involved … communications networks, maps and databases

It is those “other systems” which actually produce useable information.  Make sure you buy what you need and what can realistically perform to your expectations.  GPS, alone, just produces coordinates in space. 

The GPS Review posted a great article on user expectations today, it would be worth your while to read it, I found it very well written.

Sorry, got to run, something is tapping at my door ….

Well, you read it here a number of times before, folks.  I predicted this months back and now the French Oops, I mean the European Union (the French are a part of that, aren’t they) is finally letting the cat out of the bag, one paw at a time.

Once upon a time there was a proud country that forgot its heritage.  Instead of being happy (and justly proud) of its long traditions in democracy, world leadership and science the French sat around drinking pernod until they got the idea that they should build their own “GPS” simply because the US invented, built and maintained GPS system didn’t have the proper configuration of bars on its flag.  I have no idea how much this was influenced by the tottering French telecom giant Alcatel, but since they were a big player in this Galileo fiasco (and are now slated to be a big loser … nothing new there, Alcatel excels at that) I would think they had  a pretty important role.  The analysis off Galileo’s coming demise is well worth reading, I have quoted a bit below:

Galileo industry partners were expected to pay for two-thirds of the cost of the system and the EU one-third, with the investment paid back by the sale of satellite navigation services, the BBC reported. The BBC estimated the market for navigational services would hit $650 billion a year by 2025.

Despite the alluring revenue stream, (my emphasis .. I must have missed this at the beginning, there never was a revenue stream that wasn’t alcohol-induced) maybe the industry consortium figured out the obvious: Why would anyone pay for precise location and navigation services from Galileo when they could get the same thing free from the U.S. backed GPS system, which is only going to get better.

The Times of London doubts if Galileo will ever get off the ground when it has to compete with free GPS service. “Europe’s desire to offer a competing system has been stymied by the free service provided by GPS,” the Times wrote in an opinion piece. “How do you persuade a minicab driver to subscribe to a Galileo navigation system when he can get GPS gratis?”

The underlying premise behind my scribbling’s here has been how to get a return on investment (ROI) from GPS.  The first way to get an ROI is not to make wasteful and duplicative investments … I think they teach this at the Harvard Business School, but just in case they don’t you can add my tip to your pending MBA folder.

There are many, many ways to not only get a ROI from using GPS technology, but even to earn a profit from providing GPS services (if you really and truly can’t think of any, I’m available for selective consults).  But I’ll throw out the next increment in your online GPS MBA … don’t duplicate the existing US investment with your own second-rate after the fact copycat system.  The billions and billions of sunk costs won’t be recoverable.  Make a business plan out of what is freely available and you too have a chance to make a profit … but you do need a plan.

Anyway, now that all the PhD’s and industry execs have finally reached my non-degreed level of understanding perhaps, if they think the idea through a little better, something will eventually come from Galileo using a different (and sustainable) business model.  Maybe they could get Airbus Industries to run it for them? (Incidentally … the “Program Name” for GPS, which is seldom used these days is “NAVSTAR” … relatively innocuous.  Did anyone ever research the connotations behind Galileo before they began throwing billion of Euros at the name.  Among other attributes Galileo Galilei is renown for is the fact that his contrary and pugnacious temperament has more to do with his persecution than the actual facts the Church of Rome tried him for).