Monthly Archives: August 2013

Speeding – Major Factor in Fleet Safety

When your driver gets behind the wheel of one of your vehicles you place the safety of your fleet in his or her hands. There are many factors that can influence safe driving, such as speed, unfamiliar roads, vehicle maintenance to name a few. However, in this blog we are going to focus on how speed affects safety and how GPS tracking can help you reduce speeding. We will cover the other factors in subsequent blogs.

Speeding is a major cause of accidents in the United States. In fact in Texas speeding is even worse than the nation as a whole. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in 2010 speeding was a factor in 39% of all fatal crashes in Texas compared to 31% for the U.S. as a whole.

There are many reasons why your driver may be speeding: late for the next stop, likes to drive fast, bored, pressure from the boss. One of the most important ways to control how fast your employees drive is the company culture. A culture that encourages your employees to take unnecessary risks to get to the next stop is rewarding unsafe behavior. Safe driving should be encouraged by management at all levels so drivers understand what is really important.

Along with company culture good monitoring tools, such as GPS tracking, can help make sure all employees drive safely. A GPS tracker installed in your company’s vehicles can tell you: the speed and location of all your vehicles. With that information you can identify which drivers consistently drive too fast. GPS tracking provides many benefits and one of it’s most important is helping fleets operate more safely.

All GPS trackers record the speed of the vehicle. The speed with the location and date and time are sent to a tracking website where you can see how fast your fleet was moving. A good GPS tracking system will provide you with different tools to help monitor the speed of your vehicles.

Alerts

Speeding alerts can be set so that the GPS tracking system can record when a vehicle was going too fast. An alert can be sent immediately to an email or a mobile phone if you want to. You can set a speed threshold that is the trigger for the alert. When the vehicle goes above that threshold you will receive an alert.

Reports

Speed reports will show you when, where, and how fast a vehicle was driving. The information can be displayed as chart or graph or in a spreadsheet form. Charts and graphs are helpful in identifying very quickly which drivers are speeding more than others.

Maps

The GPS tracking map should display the location with a unique icon of where the speeding alert occurred. You can identify very quickly where your drivers were speeding. If your driver gets a speeding ticket and you want to verify his or her activity the map can help you.

Drivers

If more than one driver operates a vehicle on a frequent basis you will want to identify accurately who was driving. There are several ways to identify who was driving. One way is to create a driver in the GPS tracking software and manually assign that driver to the vehicle he or she is driving. Another method is to install a driver ID system that identifies automatically who was driving. A driver ID system requires additional equipment to be installed besides the GPS tracker. There are several options for driver ID systems. We will cover those in a later blog. In the mean time please visit our Accessories page for some driver ID options.

I hope this blog provided some good information on the importance of speeding in keeping your fleet safe. GPS tracking is a simple, cost effective tool that can help you keep your drivers, assets, and others safe. If you have any questions on how GPS tracking can help make your fleet safer please contact us.

How to Send Alerts to Your Mobile Phone

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To send an alert to your mobile phone via text message you will need to send it as an email. All you need is a mobile phone number and the email address for your mobile phone provider. Below is a list of the most common ones.

Example: 2102224444@txt.att.net

AT & T [10_digit_number]@txt.att.net

T-Mobile [10_digit_number]@tmomail.net

Verizon [10_digit_number]@ vtext.com

Spring [10_digit_number]@messaging.sprintpcs.com

How to Setup Speed Alerts

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Setting up a speed alert is very easy to do. This is one of the most important tasks for improving the safety of your fleet and reducing fuel costs. Please follow the steps below to setup a speed alert in the Fleet Management System.

An alert can be created for an entire group or just an individual item. The steps below will show you how to create one for an entire group.

1. From the Dashboard click on the Group name where you want to setup the alert. You should now see the Group Editor.

2. Click on Setup Alerts.

3. Click on Excessive Speed to select the speeding alert for configuration.

4. Set the Speed Threshold in MPH and the alert schedule. When a vehicle goes above the threshold an alert will be recorded. The schedule allows you to control when alerts can be triggered. The example in the picture sets the schedule for 24 hours per day, 7 days a week.

5. Select Show Message Icon from Display Type drop down menu. This will display a special icon on the map where the speeding alert occurred. Choose the icon you want from the Alert Image drop down menu.

6. As an option you can have the alert sent to your email or mobile phone. Enter the email address or the phone number in the Email Address box. To send the alert to your phone as a text message please see this blog post.

7. Click on Save Alert.

Now your alert is ready to go. If a vehicle or asset goes above the speed threshold you set in step 4 an alert will be recorded. If you set up an email address or phone number that alert will be delivered to you. You can also see all the recorded alerts in the Alert reports, on the Tracking map, and on the Dashboard.

Quickly Recover Your Missing Equipment

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One of the biggest problems that owners of heavy equipment have to deal with is finding the equipment when it is missing. If you own or rent heavy equipment (front loaders, generators, light towers), trailers, frac tanks, etc then you have a lot of money invested. The longer the equipment is missing the more money you lose through lost revenue and time. A GPS tracking solution can help you recover your equipment faster and more efficiently.

How Does It Work?

To track your assets all you need is a GPS tracker mounted to the equipment in a position where it can “see” the sky. If the GPS antenna is obstructed too much it will not get a good signal.

There are two types of GPS asset trackers, battery powered and hard wired. The battery powered units run completely on battery power. Some units run on off-the-shelf batteries and others run on proprietary batteries.

The hard wired trackers require power from the equipment to operate. They often have rechargeable backup batteries in case it loses power.

The tracker will send a location at set time intervals, for example every 8 hours. Some GPS trackers allow you to ping or locate the device by sending it an SMS.

Where Does It Work?

There are two options when it comes to communication, satellite or GSM/CDMA. Satellite communication works virtually everywhere with almost no dead spots. GlobalStar and Iridium are the two satellite communication providers. These trackers only allow for one way communication. You cannot send a ping or locate command to them. The SmartOne tracker is an example of a GlobalStar unit.

The GSM/CDMA trackers use the same communication technology as your mobile phone. The service can be provided by all the usual communication providers, such as AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, etc. There are dead spots with these units so equipment that goes into the middle of nowhere may “disappear” until it gets back inside the network. However, these units provide two-way communication, so you can locate them with an SMS command.

What Can You Do With It?

With GPS tracking you can make sure your equipment is where it is supposed to be. If it goes missing or needs to be located for service or pickup you have an efficient means of locating it. You can significantly reduce the amount of time and fuel spent looking for something. This is especially important if you are operating in rural areas, such as South Texas and the Eagle Ford Shale.

When it is time to locate your equipment all you have to do is login to the tracking website either on your computer or smart phone. You will see the last known location of all the equipment in your fleet. From there you can send a locate command to update the location if you are using a GSM/CDMA tracker.

To help prevent theft you can draw a geofence or virtual fence in the tracking website around the area where the equipment is supposed to be. If the equipment leaves the geofence an alert will be triggered that could be sent to your phone or email.

GPS tracking can be used to monitor just about any asset you may have. If you have any questions please contact us. We can help design a custom solution.