Tracker SystemsTracking

Tracking Vehicles and Assets

What Vehicle and Asset Tracking means to you

There are many reasons to track a vehicle or piece of equipment. Our system is designed for small to medium-sized businesses, municipalities and schools and we even offer products for parents. We answer questions such as: "I want to know which of my trucks is closest to a customer's location right now", "I want to know how fast this vehicle was going last Tuesday", "I want to know if they really were at the jobsite until 6:30", and "I want to know if my equipment is being used for side-jobs". Basically, we help you learn more about your business without having to follow your people and equipment all day and we help you keep honest people honest.

Different types of Tracking Devices

There are several types of vehicle and asset tracking products available today. Each has advantages and disadvantages. All three systems use signals from Global Positioning Satellites to determine the location of a vehicle or other item to be tracked (sometimes called a "fix").

The most basic system is called a "Passive Data Logger" which makes a list of the locations over time and stores that list until a computer can be used to read that list. The "history" can be useful, but since the information is not real-time it does not help locate a missing or misplaced vehicle and does not help to dispatch the closest vehicle.

A more advanced technology is the "Satellite Backhaul" type of system. These units also collect G.P.S. location data but they can transmit this data back to the business via a satellite antenna on the vehicle usually when a request or "ping" is sent to the vehicle. There are three drawbacks to this system: if the vehicle is parked next to a building the satellite signal may be blocked and if the system requires you to ask for the data, you may not be able to find the vehicle until it is moved and the "ping" resent. Finally, these systems are quite expensive to purchase, install and maintain. They do, however, offer a very large coverage area as long as the antenna and the backhaul satellite have a line-of-sight signal.

Cellular service enhances satellite tracking Finally, there is the "GPS/Cellular" type of system. In this technology, a device in the vehicle constantly receives location information from the G.P.S. satellite and sends it to a computer. In the most advanced systems, this information is constantly sent to a central computer system or "Data Server" via the G.S.M. cellular network. Also in the most advanced systems, if the vehicle travels outside of the cellular network, the collected G.P.S. location data are stored in the device and sent as soon as the vehicle re-enters the cellular coverage area. This is the advanced technology TRACKER SYSTEMS uses to locate and gather the route history of your vehicles and assets. Of course, there are additional features that make Tracker Systems unique... see our GPS Tracking Software features.

Tracker Systems Technology

As important as the Device installed in the vehicle is, the software INSIDE the device is essential to the way the device works for you. And most important of all, our website provides the images, lists and reports on your computer in an intuitive way to make the experience pleasant. As we hope you can see from our website, we understand that our customers are probably not in the business of writing software or designing satellite systems. We try to communicate in plain language and avoid technical terms. We work hard to make our system reliable and simple for the average person to use at the lowest possible price. Our servers are located in three states at secure facilities to provide our customers with reliable service. Visit our Features page for a list describing what our system can do for you!

Use Tracking To Get The Right Truck To The Right Job

Heavy-Duty Tow Truck Company

The owner of this company says it helps to locate the closest truck to the disabled vehicle. Since he bills the customer by the hour, he has used our tracking service to support the amount billed to the customer by showing how long his wrecker was on the job. Read more...

Accuracy of GPS Tracking Devices

How Accurate are these things, anyway?

I had a new customer call the other day asking for help troubleshooting a potential problem with their tracking devices. A little background first. The customer is a successful HVAC company with four trucks that the employees take home. The main goal the customer had for the tracking system was to assist them in verifying the employee’s hours which are called in at the end of each day.

Our customer started off the call by stating the GPS vehicle tracking devices were showing up in different places based on the time the employee said they were there. I asked which unit was having the problem. She stated they were ALL having the same problem. Taken aback, initially, I reminded myself our GPS tracking devices lock on to 12 or more GPS satellites. The satellites provide location coordinates, heading, speed and the time (provided by its onboard clock which is synchronized to the GPS Satellite clocks, which are synchronized with the terrestrial atomic clocks) and are extremely accurate. So, there had to be something more than a "problem" with the units.

Together, the customer and I found the problem by looking at the Unit List View report. This report shows the details of every single GPS report transmitted into our servers by the GPS tracking device for a specific time period. Whenever the vehicle comes to a stop and the ignition is switched off, a GPS location report is sent immediately. Then, the device sends a report after 5 minutes and 10 minutes if no movement is detected. So, this provides us with three reports confirming the vehicle is exactly where the system reports. Understanding this, the customer came to realize the guys were padding their times. With the Map It function, we were able to show specific GPS reports on the Map to verify that the employee was not at their Home Base when they called in their stop time for the day. Armed with the knowledge that the GPS vehicle tracking devices are extremely accurate and our reports substantiate the stops that the vehicle makes, the customer can now use our GPS vehicle tracking system to audit her payroll records with confidence.