I've had about enough

This morning, when recounting stories of how our customers have saved money by gaining further knowledge of what their fleet vehicles and employees were doing while away from the watchful eyes of their managers and owners, I actually started to get a little miffed. One of the first things I hear from employees is that fleet GPS tracking invades their personal privacy or that this is just Big Brother watching over them. So, as I was recounting several stories of employee theft of vehicles, payment for jobs, labor, and fuel, I realized that no employee has a right to privacy with company property and that the idea of monitoring a fleet with GPS is the only sensible way for an employer to protect their investment.

The problem I have with employees who cry foul for fleet tracking is that most of these employees have, at best, inefficiencies to hide. At worst, they are stealing and embezzling from the very company that employs them to drive and work on their fleet.  The employees miss the fact that the job is not a right, it is a priviledge to be employed to drive the vehicle they drive.

As for Big Brother, let us remember what George Orwell's book, "Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984)", was truly about. In "1984", Big Brother was a tyrannical government that monitored every area of the citizens' lives and forbid them the basic joys of life. There was no place that was free of the eyes of tyranny. This included restrooms, bedrooms, and the like. Big Brother was a forbidding menace to basic freedoms. You can read a synopsis here. 

This is a far cry from an employer, who owns his trucks, cars, vans, etc... and lets employees drive those fleet vehicles to make a living, putting a GPS tracking system on the fleet. Further, GPS tracking for a fleet is actually less intrusive than a number of monitoring activities that are employed throughout industry. Employers regularly monitor workers for their computer use, they monitor using cameras and recorders, they check and double check money in sales registers, and they monitor time cards and employee movement with the use of ID badges.

In the last 6 weeks, I have heard from customers who had their fleet trucks stolen, had employees steal $1,350 from them on a single job, had employees take joy rides between jobs, had employees use their vehicles and tools for personal jobs, and had employees use their fleet vehicles for personal errands.

So, I ask, if this is going on regularly, how should any employer who has a fleet responsibly act? Should they ignore that employees frequently steal time, money, fuel, and more? Should fleet managers and owners assume that people are basically good when the evidence is that employees, when unsupervised, "goof off" and cheat?

I would like to pretend that things were better "back when", but the truth is that this kind of thing has gone on forever. Individuals might be honest, but people, as a whole, steal and lie.

I wish this weren't the case, but it is true. So, the next time someone says that their employer is infringing on their rights by putting GPS tracking on their fleet vehicle, which is owned by the employer, I will probably beg to differ a bit more sternly than I have in the past.

Thanks for reading,

Steven Van Ooyen

CEO - Track What Matters