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.
