But instead of joining the line of whiners and complainers … or worse yet the idiots standing in line for government handouts … you want the government regulating your business even more ?  i think not.  How about profiting from tight times.  You can youknow.

Do you have a service aspect to your buisness?  is service a necessary eveil that costs you money on your bottom line, or is barely breaking even?  Well you can turn that cost ceneterinto aprofit center, or even increase exisiting profits with one simple decison that will pay from day one … get a buisness oriented GPS tracking system in place and reap savings and profits….

… service industries who must take the reins on mobile tracking during hard economic times.

December 2, 2008 — GPS Mobile Solutions announces a new arrangement with GPS industry leader Geotab, Inc. Now that the economic downturn is making ROI, performance management and customer satisfaction crucial, the GPS vehicle tracking system is more important than ever.
GPS vehicle tracking system.
To keep up with this demand and broaden its scope of products and services, GPS Mobile Solutions has entered into a new reseller relationship with the industry leader in GPS services, Geotab, Inc.

“With 19 years of experience in wireless technology, GPS Mobile Solutions is uniquely qualified to provide a total fleet management solution,” says company president Stuart Lamm. “Our new relationship with GeoTab, Inc. lets us offer a solutions oriented, customizable GPS real time …

Full arrticle here.

Yes indeed this will work.  I have ten years expereince that proves it.  And your GPS tracking system will not cost, it will pay … I have sold and installed thousands and they never fail to imporve the bottom line afyer they pay for themselves.  Geotab is one of the absolutel best … I sold them for years and they deleiver.

In today’s tight economy many one-man service companies who have been competing against you may be folding up.  capitalize on that, grab market sghare and increase your take home pay … GPS tracking is the key.

You know from time to time I have thought about settng up a gambling or a porn site.  That’s where the real money is online.  But I hate the thought of promotoing eaither of those segments of commerce.

Considering the continual barrage, though, of ‘how to defeat GPS’ searches I get here every day [erhaps I should think about a ’sin site’.

Certainly it seems the averge person online is much more interested in ‘getting away;’ with something than in learning about and using one of the greatest utilites for humanity every implemented by man … the free for all to use GPS.

GPS distress call connects Aussie over 3,000 miles

TEXAS RELAY: Hiker in Brooks Range OK, flown to Fairbanks.

By GEORGE BRYSON
gbryson@adn.com

Published: November 30th, 2008 12:18 AM
Last Modified: November 30th, 2008 03:23 PM

A distress call from a backcountry hiker in northern Alaska led to a long distance rescue over the weekend, spanning more than 3,000 miles, the Alaska State Troopers reported Saturday.

It began when a personal locator beacon control center in Texas received a call for help Friday from a transmitter registered to an Australian named David Roberts. According to the GPS signal, Roberts was in an isolated area of the Brooks Range…..

GPS Tracking Gets Cautious Endorsement

Report says electronic monitoring of offenders must be more reliable

By CHRISTIAN NOLAN

Global positioning systems can be “very valuable tools” for
monitoring the whereabouts of sex offenders and other people on
probation, but they should not be a substitute for personal supervision
by Connecticut probation officers.

Those are among the findings of a state Judicial Branch report,
which also called into question the performance of a Florida-based
company the state has hired to monitor offenders using GPS technology.
The report said the state should open its own monitoring center to
enhance supervision of offenders…. Read more of Connecticut’s formal GPS tracking for offenders report.

I thought the recommendation that the state run its own monitoring center particularly appropriate.  At first glance this seems to negate some of the savings possible using GPS offender monitoring.  But the state currently has people on board to monitor these subjects before doing any GPS buildout.  Careful re-use of employees will easily allow them to monitor under state control and still reap both benefits in accuracy (and publuic protection) as well as significnat cost savings.

I’ve show you recently how states can save on the order of 900% using GPS tracking for parolee’s and sunjects awaiitng trial.

The bottom line is, GPS tracking for offenders is worth its weight in gold, literally.  Even when it doesn’t work as well as it should, it is still good.

Several months back I wrote about an incident in Connecticut that had turned into quite a political slanging match.  A parolee was allegedly lost by the contractor doing the monitoring for the state and one and another politician began shouting over each other to be heard about how they wanted things fixed, and fixed now.

As I pointed out in my article on why the GPS tracking was working all the time and why you can’t really use it to monitor literally every footstep of a subject … Want To Be Happy With GPS Tracking? Read The Spec… a state study has concluded the sytem or the contractor running it did not actually fail.  Some changes in procedures and expectations have been amade and massacgusetts will go on from there.  See the full article on the report to improve gps tracking here.

Often states and other government agencies don’t release their costs on GPS tracking.  In this case I see a very interesting set of figures in a sidebar on the left of the article.  The state tracks 3,100 offenders at an annual cost of $950,000.  That’s about $306.00 a year per subject, well under a dollar a day.  To put these individuals ‘in the pen’ would cost a minimun of $30,000 each per year or well over $90,000,00 per year.  That means for every subject where the state is substituing GPS tracking for incarceration the savings are over 900%.

Now in today’s economic climate does the fact you might be wasting 900% of your budget make you think a little harder about GPS tracking?

WINOOSKI, Vt., Nov 18, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Remote Intelligence Systems LLC. announces the introduction and market launch of the new ORBISAT 100 Dual Modem (GPS/GPRS/GSM) System.

The ORBISAT 100 System is a new Dual GPRS/GPS Satellite tracking and communications unit, designed for all asset

tracking, communications, protection and monitoring. The ORBISAT 100 is specifically designed to maximize coverage and availability of GPRS networks and GPS signal via the ORBCOMM LEO Satellite network and to take advantage of its double simm card and the Stellar GPS Satellite Communicator.

The ORBISAT 100 System is the first all-in-one Dual GPS/GPRS/GSM system to be commercialized in the USA and Latin America. The ORBISAT 100 incorporates a Stellar DS100 satellite subscriber communicator, double Simm Cards for GPRS communication, and sensors in a single enclosure, to provide 100% coverage either via ORBCOMM Satellite network or GPRS Coverage. Rest of the GPS tracking anywhere article here.

I’ve been listening to the arguments on both sides of the aisle for years now.  I’ve even had clients that were so “hard over” about the supposedly outrageous costs of satellite versus cellular data connectivity that they bought the wrong systems to suit their needs and totally wasted their money.

Satellite GPS Tracking can be very cost effective when compared to GPRS GPS Tracking.  And cheaper is not cheaper at all if it fails to do the job.  Don’t make decisions based on hype … het the facts.

Obviously the system won’t attain absolute perfect accuracy.  The specs for unclassifuied civilian use say basiclaly plus or minus 10 meters.  But usually the system itself perfrmns a lot better thna that.

How much better? Well, the USAF, the operators of the system for the worls, spend alot of time documenting pastperformance and predicting the future.  Here’s a snap shot of a tool you cna use any time, from anywhere inthe world, to see how well the system is meeting its goals:

Just go to the USAF Offical site and you can update your expectations any time you wish.

On impressive thing to notice.  This chart is showing 2 to 4 meter accuracy for most of the populated world, most of the time.  that’s amost five times better thna the performance standard.  Not too shabby.  The US militray is pretty unpopular these days, especially in the US where they are just ‘client soldiers’ off in Iraq while the rest of the country grapples with the “real war”, trying to kepe up the ortgagepayments on the house the “iover bought’ to impress.  But you might givve a thought to the people who spend their days, nights, weekends and holidays making a military system work five times betetr than designed for all US citizens along with everyone else in the world.  My hat is off to them.

GPS Tracking Map

For years I have suffered both as a client and a solution provider from the exclusive proprietary-ness of almost all GPS equipment and service providers.  Here we have a free, world-wide totally ‘open sourced’ utility … the GPS itself, and open source specifications, such and the NMEA (National Marine Electronics Association) for typing off-the-shelf or custom-built components using the GPS together, and yet for years manufacturers have conspired to try to make access to the basic ‘guts’ of the system difficult or even impossible.

GPS gate is a company dedicated to selling software and hardware that not only works within the GPS but also works with other manufacturer’s equipment and software so that the user, and the customer GPS service provider comes out the winner.

We need more companies like this in order to move GPS tracking from the backwaters of the technocrats into the forefront of business management and increased business profit through GPS Tracking

This is a previously published article, updated becuase the information it provides about GPS tracking is even more relevant today that when I started in the GPS tracking business lo these many years ago.

A 21yo environmental ‘freak” cum anarchist is implicated in several fire bombings in California.

The judge, asked about the release of this guy while he waits for further federal charges to be adjudicated stated: ……….he could not consider releasing Lewis unless GPS tracking was made available.”I’ve been advised by pretrial services that electronic monitoring could be enhanced by GPS, which would allow (us) to pinpoint his actual whereabouts,” Nowinski said. “(I) will not consider release until the technology is made available.”…..

Full story here: http://www.auburnjournal.com/articles/2005/02/18/news/top_stories/01firebombs.txt

Now keeping an apparently quite dangerous criminal under surveillance seems a creditable idea. Many don’t understand that for years the practice of “electronic surveillance” of criminals is a low-tech, analog easy to defeat “has been”.

Too bad more business owners don’t look closely at the advantages of GPS … they seem unwilling to know the truth about their business.

Kudos to Judge Nowinski

And if you are still focused on the much misunderstood \and often “dead wrong” nonsense on the web that focuses on GPS tracking as “spying” or an “invasion of privacy”, then this is well worth your careful consdieration.  What are you really trying to keep secret?

Yet the number of news items I get on a weekly basis telling me about new, widesprad and innovative methods of using GPS tracking to help the bottom line of business and government is really astounding.

For every time I see a US-based news item about some luxury gold course or another buying a GPS for their gold carts I’ll see two or three “meaty” reports about government agencies and businesses in Indai putting GPS tracking to use and making it not only pay for itself, but add profit to boot.  Example:

CHENNAI: The state government has set up a modern control room at the state traffic planning cell (STPC) office on Kamarajar Salai to monitor the 122 GPS-enabled police patrol vehicles deployed along the national highways across the state.

“The new system will help the police patrol vehicles to reach the accident spot within two minutes of the incident. The movement of patrol vehicles will be monitored round the clock from the STPC office. Our main aim is to reduce the deaths due to road accidents,” state
minister KN Nehru told The Times Of India. He was talking to mediapersons after attending a review meeting to gauge the effectiveness of its initiatives to reduce the number of accidents in the state… full GPS tracking success story article here.

Now with all our “inventive genius, “first world” financial skills (oh, well maybe not) business acumen, education and so on, how come you have never read a story like this about your state or your city or business?

A bit mind boggling, isn’t it?  There has never been a better time to make GPS Tracking pay for itself.

Not only are more drivers suffering drowsiness and sleep incidents at the wheel, but at least 25% are violating the law, to drive longer, make more money and put themselves and others at risk. For years the law has been enforced by self-recorded paper log books, maintained by the drivers themselves. See an excellent example and explanation here:

It’s no coincidence that for years these books have carried the name “swindle sheets”. Sometimes this appellation is earned by cheating people but much more often it’s a case of everything being so darned complicated and hard to check up on. You would think, giving the huge costs and serious safety issues involved that this would be handled by computers. Well, you’d be wrong. Exactly 1 (yes one) major long haul carrier keeps their drivers safe and legal solely by means of on-board GPS tracking and a computerized log program. (The company is Werner Enterprises and their GPS tracking partner, Qualcomm, and hats off to them for doing it). There are tons of logging programs that keep the “swindle Sheet” electronically, but the data is still dependent on the drivers memory, integrity and ability to code with the ever more complex regulations.

The purpose of today’s rant is to wonder why more companies don’t make use of simple, cheap GPS logging systems that could save lives and millions of dollars per year? Perhaps they are waiting for even more government regulations?

Dave
www.satviz.com

What is Mobile Millennium?

Phone with traffic flow map

Mobile Millennium is a partnership between Nokia, NAVTEQ, and UC Berkeley, based at the California Center for Innovative Transportation (CCIT), a deployment-focused research center at Berkeley’s Institute of Transportation Studies. It is supported by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s SafeTrip-21 Initiative and the California Department of Transportation.

Researchers from Nokia and Berkeley have constructed an unprecedented traffic monitoring system capable of fusing GPS data from cell phones with data from existing traffic sensors. The research and development phase of this project was dubbed Mobile Millennium for the potential thousands of early adopters who will participate in the pilot deployment, launching in early November, 2008.

Mobile Millennium will cover not only highways, but also the arterial network, where there is currently almost no sensing infrastructure. The software will work on Nokia and non-Nokia phones, and the public will be able to register and download it free of charge.

This is pretty much a no\brainer.  In return for the information your phone produces anyway, you get back a detailed picture of not only where you are, but where you are going and how long it will take to get there.  Hats off to GPS tracking, another form or ROI.

Personal navigation devices maker, Dash, is killing its GPS devices.

It will shift its focus from selling hardware-based GPS systems to just licensing its applications and services to run on other products.

Dash, which competes with Garmin and TomTom among others, launched its GPS device just earlier this year.

Dash started selling its products through its website for $400 in April. But its end seems to have come even before it could make it to its first holiday season.

The company says it will now focus on licensing to onboard navigation system makers, smartphones, PDAs, mobile internet devices and other consumer electronics.

To enter the retail market is alays a difficult decison for a technology company.  But once the decison is made it’s idiocy not to continue the process through at least the first holiday season.  80% or more of consumer electronics sales come in November and December ,… so these guys quit on the 1st or 2nd of November?

Amazing to say the least … who knows what sales might have been through the next two mnonths? Apparently, yet another case where the techno-geeks are running the show and completely missing the point about where and when sales come from.  Too bad, too, because this was avery intersting package … now we’ll never know.

I guess this post should just consist of one of those pictures that speak for themselves.  But you know me, never one with nothing to say ;-).

Several years back there was a semi-elaborate scam about a supposed Japanese manufacture called “Panchira” (panchira, by the way is Japanese slang for “show your panties) which was producing a line of GPS locatable lingerie.  Turns out the hoax was originally perpetrated by a fellow who just wanted to get more traffic to his web site.  he did.

I wrote a follow-on to that piece almost a year ago, entitled “tracking her panties for fun and profit”.

When I saw a news item this morning I immediately thought, “is this April First”?  When I double cheeked the calendar and then the rest of the details it looks like this is a “for real” development this time.

I’m still unsure if this can really be made workable with the size, antenna requirements and power budgets of today’s devices, but I’m no engineer and who am I to throw cold water on innovation.

A loose translation of the Portuguese tagline under the model is, “Capable of finding me”, an indeed, thousands already have.  Who says GPS Tracking can’t be beautiful as well as practical?

We get a lot of questions here at Air Miles Maps Online regarding the finer points of the Federal Motor carrier Safety Administration rules for so-called “short haul” or “local” log book (RODS) exemptions.  It’s always best to go to the source:

http://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/rules-regulations/truck/driver/hos/hos-faqs.asp
C-2 What is an “air mile”?
The term “air-mile” is internationally defined as a “nautical mile” which is
equivalent to 6,076 feet. Thus, the 100 air-miles are equivalent to 115.08
statute miles, and 150 air-miles are equivalent to 172.6 statute miles.

Most operators and drivers reading here are OTR drivers and do not operate under the 100 air
mile log book exemption. But for some, this can be a very important exemption for improving your bottom line by eliminating a lot of paperwork requirements.

Remember, this air mile log book exemption doesn’t measure how many miles it takes to drive from A to B, it only measures the straight-line distance, or as the crow flies”, from A to B.
.
There are many drivers that think once you cross a state’s border, that is to say become interstate, you cannot use the 100 air mile exemption.  That’s not true, that rule went away quite a few years ago.  Here are the requirements for using the 100 air mile log book exemption:

100 air-mile radius exemption:
A driver is exempt from maintaining the driver’s daily log requirements of Section 395.8 if all of the following are true:
a.. The driver operates within a 100 air-mile radius of the normal work reporting location.
b.. The driver returns to the work reporting location and is released from work within 12 consecutive hours.
c.. Each 12 hours on duty are separated by at least:
a.. 10 consecutive hours off duty for property-carrying drivers, or
b.. 8 consecutive hours off duty for passenger-carrying drivers.
d.. The driver does not exceed a maximum of:
a.. 11 hours driving time following 10 consecutive hours off duty for property-carrying drivers, or
b.. 10 hours driving time following 8 consecutive hours off duty for passenger-carrying drivers.
e.. The motor carrier that employs the driver maintains and retains for a period of six months accurate and true   time records that show:
a.. The time the driver reports for duty each day;
b.. The total number of hours the driver is on duty each day;
c.. The time the driver is released from duty each day; and
d.. The total time for the preceding 7 days for first-time or intermittent drivers.

This really seems pretty important to me, now that we are heading into the last quarter of the year and a (hopefully) very busy holiday season … this will help get those store deliveries out there in the shortest time and the lowest possible cost via the use of an Air Miles Map.

You to can save, even if you have not, as yet, seen how much you can also save with GPS Tracking.

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.

Other people, and buy do you see them every day, keep track of every hangnail and runny nose their kids have and threaten to sue to government or someone over every scraped knee.

We have become a nation developed world polarized, not along political party lines but by the zealous guarding of privacy on one side and the incessant demands that “the government” or at least someone do something about each and every hazard we face in life.

Just to add complexity and turmoil to the situation, the most rabid advocates of one issue are often the same people strongly opposed to the other side of the coin.  This article should really turn someone’s crank:

Future Nissan cars will keep an eye on more than just the road

If Nissan has its way with a technology that it is about to trial in Japan, it could lead to the ultimate in privacy invasion – a giant computer network that tracks all pedestrians and all cars all the time.

The Intelligent Transport System is part of a long-running project at Nissan that aims to vastly improve the safety of its vehicles and the number of collisions they are involved in.

GPS phones

Its latest element calls for car computers to be linked to a central server via a wireless network and pedestrians to do the same through GPS-enabled mobile phones.

As you may have guessed, the system keeps an eye on pedestrians as they wander around – presumably, like headless chickens – and beams warnings to drivers when it thinks car and pedestrian might cross paths… more on Nissan GPS spying.…

The part that really gets me regarding this item on an innovative use for GPS tracking?  Considering that it is a Nissan proposal one would think that at least some of the design staff have driven once or twice in Tokyo.  I have, I lived there three years.

“Kon bon wa, Warning …7,011 pedestrians approaching from the left, 6256 pedestrians approaching from the right and one suicide attempt now on his way down from the 65th floor, domo arigato, ku da si.”

There is likely no end to the uses for GPS tracking technology, the challenge on this one will be to get a GPS Tracking ROI.

“We lost track of 1,300 sex offenders,” the actress says. “We know they’re out there. But, thanks to Governor Gregoire, we have no idea where.”

That’s the message to voters delivered in television ads and a few hundred thousand mailers on behalf of Chris Gregoire’s opponent, former state Sen. Dino Rossi… Read more abut the losses you will incur if you don’t take advantage of GPS tracking.

Everyone thinks of GPS tracking from the aspect of providing up-to-date locations and conditons of on-the-road assets.  This, is of course a primary benefit.  I wrote just a day or two ago about a propective client of mine who could have actaull made money with GPS tracking in just one transaction with a simple reant-a-car operation.

But GPS tracking cna do a whole lot more.

• I’ve written frequently on how GPS tracking of parolee’s and sex offenders can pay of big time in both human and monetary terms.
• I’ve pointed out as well that many states and counties don’t even know how many vehciles they have, much less where they are at any given moment.
• And now we find that an otherwise progressive state like Washington can’t even account for 1600 of it’s sex offenders … which it already has pent a fortune on, putting them into a so-called system of tracking that the law requires.

How plain does this have to be made?  i am not tlaking politics here.  I don’t vote in Eashington, I know nothing about the candiadtes and I frankly could not care less on a political standpoint.

But for an elected governor and his staff to actually lose (as confirmed by his own State Police) more than a thousand felons is just … well I’m at a oss for a word that coveys more in the way of wrong doing than malfease.

If you are responsible to know the “how many and where” of any asset, then you are actully losing a fortune by not taking advantage of the rapid ROI of GPS tracking. You could even get run out of office.

Table of contents for GPS Murderer

1. A Load Of Bullocks — GPS Tracking Is A Murderer? (Continued — Part 3)

I’m continuing my series based on this recent report, focused mainly on New Zealand and Australia but with world-wide applicability to my readers.  The sensational aspect of the report alleges GPS tracking of employees was at least in part to blame for the regrettable suicide of an Australian communications technician … which is where the title came from … but the report also explains how many employers are suing GPS tracing for improved ROI, customer service and even employee safety.  I’ll present some facts, and you can be the judge.  If you haven’t already done so I highly recommend you read the whole GPS Tracking Drives Employees Over the Edge article, as it is well written and brings up many areas of concern.  here are a couple more areas of concern and my opinion, based on real-world experience.

… the level of detail provided by GoFinder’s reports was unnecessary in normal work contexts.

“A missing car can be located without having it self-report continually or even regularly - it just needs to respond when asked,”…

I sincerely hope that the folks who hold these ideas never find themselves upside down in a ditch.  I know, I know, this can never happen to you but a hundred thousand or so drivers world-wide each year find out that in the blink of an eye they suddenly have become the “other guy” … the one who always has the accident.  In order to be of any real safety value, the GPS tracking must now the vehicle’s location as often as possible.

One of my first government customers had a fleet of over 2,100 vehicles which drove more than 2 million miles per year, often on unimproved roads in remote locations.  Equipping the fleet with GPS tracking had been discussed for a number of years until the fateful year when the client suffered three separate fatal accidents involving employees coupled with 13, yes thirteen separate roll-over accidents.  Gravel roads, winter blizzard conditions, high winds and driver immaturity were all likely factors.

So the client sprang for and installed a fleet-wide proof of concept test … we installed 300 GPS tracking units on vehicles which the client had identified as his highest risk assets.  On the first day that we had any units installed … with full knowledge of the drivers, by the way … the client joined me in the control room where we had the vehicle’s “on screed”.  His first comment?  “Why do they all seem to be going so fast”?

Well they “seemed” to be going so fast was because they were going so fast.  The drivers, over the years, had adopted a unit behavior climate where regulations of the ‘boss’ were translated into the thought of ‘suggestions’ to the drivers.  In the first month, by actual measurement, fleet-wide average speed went down 20 miles per hour … yes, that much.  I know you think your drivers aren’t this bad … but neither did this man.

The third day the concept test was running a driver hopped in his vehicle for his first trip of the day, gunned it out of it’s gravel parking space, twisted the wheel on a patch of mixed ice and gravel and … yup, you guessed, Wham! upside down in the ditch that bordered the parking area.  Of course the antenna for the GPS unit was mounted on the roof.  After finding out about the accident via a telephone call from the site, the client arrived in the control room again visibly upset that the accident had not been reported by the GPS.  After a cup of coffee and a few minutes conversation the client began to understand why a radio-based device was likely to be rather less than dependable with a 4,000 pound SUV resting atop it in the bottom of a drainage ditch.

What might have happened to the driver had the client followed the somewhat unrealistic suggestion of not tracking the vehicles as they drove and only determining their GPS position when they were obviously overdue?  How long would you like to be under a truck in a ditch before someone sent you help?

“Vehicle over-use can be controlled through periodic checks of mileage against travel plans and travel reports.”

Sorry, but this one is patent nonsense.  read just a few of my experiences in this line here and here.  I can make mileage records show anything you want them to show if it is my intention to deceive you.  In addition, another client did some analysis of his labor hours and found out one of his top office assistants spent a minimum of four hours per week on resolving discrepancies between mileage reports turned in by drivers and actual odometer readings made by mechanics when the vehicle’s came in for routine maintenance.  How much profit is there to your business in reconciling mileage report discrepancies?  Not much I would recon.  Why not use a system which automatically reports and put those office assistants and skilled mechanics to work at their highest and best value tasks to help your bottom line?

The owner of a Sydney car rental dealership, who also wished to remain anonymous, said he installed the tracking devices mainly because he charges by the kilometre and some customers abused this by disconnecting the speedometer.

Is anything involving your business profit and loss directly applicable to readings off the odometer?  You think that only an infinitesimal percentage of customers would cheat you this blatantly?  Well, keep believing it … perhaps wishing will make it so.  There are a thousand and one ways a customer can cheat you on mileage … or a customer can abandon the vehicle and leave you the task of finding it.  How much net loss on the rental will you have then?

A prospective client in Colorado rented a car to a customer who drove it to Louisiana (in violation of the rental contract, by the way).  While driving around in Baton Rouge the car overheated.  The customer drove the car to a local repair shop, locked it up and flew home saying nothing to anyone.  The client, who had not yet opted to have any units installed, might never have found the car until about 7 days after the car’s return was overdue the owner of the service establishment had a locksmith come and open the car and tracked down my client’s address and phone number via the rental papers.  Did the owner of the repair shop call just to be a good guy?  Nope.  he called to inform my soon-to-be client that there was already an outstanding bill of $100 a day for unauthorized parking as well as $75 dollars for the locksmith plus phone charges.  Grrr.

After paying an employee to fly to Louisiana, pay the bills, discover and rectify the cooling problem … 4 days total to get home, my client tracked down and located the original renter and suit in small claims court.  The judge’s decision?  The renter must pay the client for the original rental fee, the client must absorb the rest of the costs since he had clearly furnished a defective vehicle.  Ouch.

Still think it’s smart to ‘save’ the money a GPS tracking system on your rental fleet would cost?  Heck, if the repair shop owner hadn’t gone out of his way to collect for his ‘parking fees’ the car might still be in Baton Rouge.

Table of contents for GPS Murderer

1. A Load Of Bullocks — GPS Tracking Is A Murderer?
2. A Load Of Bullocks — GPS Tracking Is A Murderer? (Continued)

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.