Looking For Feedback On Best Practice For Transporting Cameras

Do we have to worry about hardware malfunctions due to cameras being subject to normal transporting in vehicles?

In general, and in my experience, I would say no.  Your bigger risks are likely from them getting damaged from being tossed around in the truck or lost/misplaced if they are riding around in the truck for an extended period of time.

The cameras have already likely come from some place overseas, been moved to a regional warehouse, sent to a distributor, put on their shelves, put in boxes and shipped via UPS/Fedex (which are not known for their gentle treatment of packages), and then dropped (literally?) on your doorstep.  A couple of extra miles in your tech's van will not adversely affect them, especially if they are in original boxes.

If you opt to have techs keep inventory, you might want to create an inventory tracking category for "Equipment assigned to tech". Your basic equipment stages might be:

Received in warehouse

Equipment in in-house staging

Equipment on truck of Tech X

Equipment installed at customer location

Track the time that equipment stays in the "Equipment on truck of Tech X" stage, and after 3 business days send an email/etc to the tech and their manager that says something like "This equipment shows as in your possession and not installed. You are responsible for ownership and control of this equipment until installation. If this status report is incorrect, report errors to your manager immediately."

If equipment stays on the truck more than 7 business days, the tech should be required to put it back in inventory and re-check it out later.

If we were just having a "is it ok if the tech has spares in the truck" conversation it'd be one thing.  There are two problems with cameras in installer's trucks:

1. the bad installers tend to apply "try every spare in my truck" troubleshooting techniques, instead of engaging their brains, checking IP addresses, calling tech support, etc.

2. that camera you stuffed in your truck 6 months ago probably hasn't had it's firmware updated and lemme guess you NEVER do firmware updates at the job site because that would take time (and require the tech to know what they're doing.)

Good tech, doing proper work, following paperwork procedures to track inventory?  Heck yeah let 'em keep a few cameras in the truck.  I'm sure that'll be useful someday.