Third party analyst studies confirm GPS tracking positively impacts driving behavior.   Reduced speeds and improved driving habits reduce fuel consumption and lowers risk.  In most cases, insurance providers offer discounts in coverage for these reasons.   Just the known presence of a GPS tracking device in the vehicle has a positive effect.   Beyond the presence of the GPS tracking device there are features within the tracking application that allow for notification and reporting to identify poor driving behaviors.

At Track What Matters we have found that our customers are more interested in behavioral trends over individual incidents.   Our Speed Report provides this analysis cleanly and easily.   Repeat offenders are easily identified.  The more frequent the offenses over an extended period of time, 1 month, 2 months etc. enables business owners and fleet managers to coach behavior rather than respond to a single incident.   This can provide for a more productive conversation and outcome.

Track What Matters’ easy to use interface and built in reporting capabilities makes identifying opportunities for efficiencies and cost cutting easy.   Track What Matters takes the guess work out of operations and fleet management.

Yesterday, one of our customers who transports very sensitive materials (we cannot share the name due to privacy concerns), called when one of their trailers appeared to be in the wrong place.  At their request, we validated the GPS tracking data they were seeing on

Box Van Trailers

Google Maps in our tracking system and in our GPS tracking reports.  The trailer tracking data was extremely accurate (within a meter).  We were certain of the trailer’s location when it reported in.

The trailer was stolen!

What is important to know is that the trailer tracking devices have a long battery but report infrequently to achieve this.  Therefore, it was critical that, since we were in an emergency situation, we increased the frequency of tracking for this trailer.  So, at the next report time, we had ready a configuration change that made the tracking device report more frequently.

Once we updated the trailer tracking device’s reporting frequency, our customer was quickly able to direct the police to the location of the stolen trailer.  This “chase” ended up spanning 3 states and involved multiple law enforcement agencies.

Unfortunately, the police did not recognize the trailer the first time they checked.  The thief had switched the license plates.  But, a short time later, the trailer tracking device reconfirmed the stolen trailer’s location and the police were dispatched again.  Our customer was able to give the police some identifying markings on the trailer.  These markings confirmed that this was the stolen trailer.

He would have gotten away with it if not for the pesky trailer tracking device our customer had installed.  The trailer thief is now in police custody awaiting extradition to the state where he stole the trailer.

When I spoke with the customer at the end of the day, his last statement was “This certainly justifies everything we spent on this project and will for a few years.”

That’s exactly what we love to hear.

According to a recent article, GPS tracking ranks as the second highest grosser of all iTunes apps.

What this translates to, in general terms for the general population, is that we as a society are rapidly embracing “location aware” applications and GPS tracking devices.

We want to know where we are physically located and increasingly we are growing more comfortable with sharing with others where we are physically located.   For the GPS tracking community this is good news.

For business owners, the concern for employee intrusion is rapidly becoming no longer an issue.   As a society we expect others to know where we are and we are ok with that.  For investors and users this rapid adoption simply means that more innovation and more ways to expand location aware applications and services are certainly on the way.
http://ow.ly/28nqr

These headlines are becoming common place.  Their projections are scary if you believe their skyrocketing figures like 170% over the next 10 years according to one such article in Transport Topics.   One thing is for sure.  Fuel prices are not likely to trend down over the next few years.   Fuel efficiency is top of mind for every fleet manager and business owner.   GPS tracking should be a central weapon in your arsenal against rising cost.  By tracking your vehicles you can effectively influence and adjust your driver’s behavior in a positive fashion.   By monitoring the speed of your drivers and the amount of time each vehicle idles you can dramatically reduce your fuel consumption.
Track What Matters’ easy to use interface and built in reporting capabilities makes identifying opportunities for efficiencies and cost cutting easy.   Track What Matters takes the guess work out of operations and fleet management.  GPS tracking with Track What Matters just makes cents.

Source: Transport Topics Online

Federal safety standards for Chassis to go into effect June 30^th.

This recent development in safety standards has accelerated a shift in ownership and management of chassis’s in the inter-modal industry.   Shipping companies are moving to their core competencies in these tough economic times and that means they are no longer going to be providing chassis’s for free to the trucking industry.   This shift has been in the works for over 30 years according to Daniel Smith with Tioga Group, Inc., an inter-modal consultant group.

Semi trailer chassis

For trucking companies moving shipping containers this means lots of changes.  New regulations, new standards, and additional equipment cost, maintenance and management.   The management of these chassis assets is critical to these trucking companies that use chassis’s to make 20 million trips a year delivering container shipments.   Management of these inventories so that the utilization of these chassis assets are optimized is critical to the bottom line.

Track What Matters provides an inexpensive GPS Asset Tracker device that can be tracked from any internet enabled device for pennies a day.   Tracking of equipment saves time and money.  Instead of guessing where your assets are you will know.  And by tracking activity you also can manage your inventory so that you optimize the use of your investment preventing over use and over buying.   Chassis Tracking just makes cents.

Source: Transport Topics

Chassis tracking for trucking

According to a recent Transport Topics article there are 850,000 chassis’s used on US roads today.   Most of those chassis historically have been owned and managed by the international and domestic shipping lines.  Due to recent changes in the regulation of safety standards for chassis’s there is a trend for the ownership and management of chassis’s, used to move inter-modal freight, being shifted to the trucking industry.  Trucking companies are being forced to either own or lease chassis’s.   These road assets often are left or lost in shipping yards.   Economic times being what they are, trucking companies cannot afford to mismanage these critical assets.

Track What Matters provides an inexpensive GPS Asset Tracker device that can be tracked from any internet-enabled device for pennies a day.   Tracking of equipment saves time and money.  Instead of guessing where your assets are, you will know.  And by tracking activity you also can manage your inventory so that you optimize the use of your investment preventing over use and over buying.   Chassis Tracking just makes cents.

Wednesday morning, we received a call from a customer who has been with us for a couple of years.  They have GPS tracking on a single vehicle and they hadn’t been spending much time tracking.  But, they kept their account open and it paid off big.

At approximately 7:00 a.m. eastern time, they discovered their van full of audio and visual equipment had been stolen!  Within minutes, they were able to log in to our fleet tracking site and locate their vehicle.  Within a few minutes, the police located their van at a nearby warehouse with all of the contents.

Hearing that our customers successfully recovered their stolen vehicles is pretty exciting!

A politician from Oregon would like to put GPS tracking on your vehicle.  This isn’t just tracking your fleet.  This is tracking your personal vehicle for tax purposes!  I have always been in favor of the private owner of a vehicle, trailer, container, or piece of equipment being able to track their assets, but the idea of the US Government tracking personal vehicles is very disturbing.

Though they just say they want to record mileage and use times, these devices would expose private citizen driving habits to the government.  That’s all fine when we have a “good” government.  But, what happens if the government ever goes bad?  History repeats itself…  Is it impossible to think that a Stalin or Hitler could ever come on the scene in a western country?  Someday?

Follow the link below to see how the US Government plans to track your vehicle with a very scary bill.

Congressman wants government GPS tracking in your car.

Again… Scary

It is said that a bad economy leads to increased thefts.  Apparently that is true.  In the last month, we have seen more attempted thefts committed against our customers than I can ever remember.  Our fleet owners have reported thefts of vehicles, containers, trailers, and equipment at what is an alarming rate.

Fortunately, almost every stolen item (the exception was an inside job) was recovered quickly thanks to installed GPS tracking.  One fleet vehicle in Florida was full of audio/visual equipment.  For this vehicle, the GPS tracking device and software allowed our customer to direct the police to the warehouse where their van was within just a few minutes.

Another customer has had multiple collection bins stolen in the last month.  Each time, he has recovered the container the same day.  The amazing thing is that these are donation bins that have been stolen at a rate that requires him to put our GPS asset tracking device on them.

For these customers, a few cents a day has saved them thousands in replacement and insurance costs.

At Track What Matters, many of our customers have told us of thefts they have personally experienced. The Wall Street Journal is seeing it too. Statistics prove that freight movers need to be prepared against thieves.

We have a solution for this.

Battery Powered up to 3 Years

You can get tracking for your trailers for just a few dollars per month.