Fleet GPS Trackers

Anyone have any good tracker they can suggest? I've looked at two of them now, both with Iphone apps for realtime tracking. At the end of the day, when you have different teams all over the geography, they need to be monitored. A friend of mine owns a business with 30 vehicles, and catches guys doing things all the time they shouldn't. One time, he caught a crew leader start his own rival business, and send his (the owner's) guys and vehicles to that crew leader's jobsite. So he was paying for labor and gas to do handle a competing company's customers. Stuff like this happens a lot. Every six months, I catch guys trying to take my equipment out for their own use. It would also make me feel safer against theft, two of my trucks cost me 170k. We recently submitted an insurance claim on some equipment for 4k, and insurance tried to not pay it. If someone were to try to steal them, at least I'd be able to track it and go get it back (that, or I could lose 100k). Another benefit would be being able to show GPS data in case of an accident.

No trolling in B&F. Contribute something of value or move on.

Keg, I don't give a shit.

Merkins4Brazil_sl said:

nah it doesn't. pretty mind blowing you are constantly in fear of your employees going out of their way to fuck you. you have some fundamental problems in your business if this is happening to you.

Click to expand...

In another life, I consulted to hundreds of small and moderate sized businesses, and 100% of them dealt with waste (in this manner). The only owners I've ever met that didn't worry about this either have their heads buried in the sand, or have no employees. That friend I mentioned thought his financial controls were tight. He had only commercial contracts, and they sent checks directly to him. He had no inclination that one of his crew leaders would start a rival business and siphon off laborers, equipment and gas to serve his own customers. This is just one example of hundreds I know of. I've known of service businesses where the guys go screw their GF's in the middle of the day, and got caught doing it while on the clock.

I know a guy who owns a service business that said his productivity jumped 15% when his employees knew they were being watched. I've had two services recommended, I'm curious if anyone else has any XP with them.

Disp_sl said:

You don't carry comp coverage on 2 trucks valued at $170k?

Click to expand...

I spoke to them, and they are only going to pay depreciated cost. But the reality is I pretty much spend 3k a month replacing parts. My one truck that is 110k would only fetch me 20k in case of complete disaster, but the reality is that it's rebuilt and like brand new. I'm trying to get out ahead of any potential problems with this.

A competitor fired a guy for not showing up to work. The guy says he'll get even with him. He follows the guys up to the job site, waits until they are on another side of the house, and hooks up a 40k piece of equipment, hauling it off. The police never caught the guy, he left the state.

It's better to be proactive.

Merkins4Brazil_sl said:

Once again you take something simple as wanting to know about a GPS sollution and turn it into WAHHHHH!!!! My employees are scumbags who hate me. I'm not rich enough!!!

knock if off dude. take it back into your 'I went to the best B-school ever thread'.

Click to expand...

You are absolutely right, the hundreds of owners that have told me they dealt with it are a figment of my imagination.

Merkins4Brazil_sl said:

next time make a thread about the actual subject ... not another excuse for to you cry again. a $30 hitch lock would kept the $40K machine from driving off, ex-employee or not. they make lojacks for heavy equipment as well, try google. other than that your constant whining about the fact you hire cheap labor scumbags who may or may not burn you is old news.

Click to expand...

Also my imagination. 6% of sales from this issue, on average. I guess LoJack fixes someone being off route?

http://www.inc.com/john-brandon/how-...who-steal.html

In a service business, most of the problems come from being off route. Stop trying to derail a simple informational thread.

Eyashusa_sl said:

You should just tell them you installed the GPS trackers and see what happens... it's like a lawn care Panopticon or whatever kind of business you run

Click to expand...

I'm going to do it, I was looking at one service, and then heard that it wasn't so reliable. Apparently, the units go under a lot. The threat of having it is one thing, but it's not just to stop employee waste. There are times when a big customer (city or some other large organization) demands we change route. We've had calls where we need to do something in the next few hours, or else. But we let the guys pick their route (they don't tell us what order they are doing it in). They run my equipment (which is loud) and can't hear their cell phone. I need the ability for myself and my Manager to be able to pop in on the jobsite, because if a city calls and demands we do the work, if we don't, we could lose their future business. This just happened today. A wealthy customer that owns a power company demanded we do a job today. He owns a lot of land and is courted by other companies all of the time. You can't fight city hall. If a call comes in at the end of the day, we may not get to it in time. It's the same thing with emergency work, we work with insurance companies, they send us their referrals, but they expect to be #1 priority. We need to be more responsive.

Every time I get a service picked out, there's some problem with it. I need to do this within the next 30 days. And everyone that I've seen has a three year contract, no outs.

Merkins4Brazil_sl said:

ITT - proof, best 'B-School' in the world can't make you good at business.

Click to expand...

Irrelevant to the conversation. If you don't like the subject of comparing GPS tracking services, go elsewhere.