Vehicle Tracking: Good Or Bad?

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Brian Rhodes
Jan 13, 2014
IPVMU Certified

I am curious to know your take on company vehicle GPS tracking, ie: products like Xora. Specifically I am interested to know how commonly they are used on fleet vehicles.

Do most companies use trackers to manage the vehicles they own and make sure they are not misused?

Does your company car have such a tracker? Please vote below:

If you answered 'yes', which platform is it? Do you think it is good or bad?

EO
Eric Olson
Jan 13, 2014

One of our partners, Remote Tracking Systems provides this type of GPS tracking system. I know its been very effective in helping customers quickly find stolen assets, including vehicles. If you are looking for a system, its probably worth checking them out.

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Chris Bird
Jan 13, 2014

We use Verizon NetworkFleet. Worth the money for real time tracking and reporting.

SP
Sean Patton
Jan 14, 2014

When I worked as a Verizon line tech, we had that installed in our vans; and I loved it. I had a previously-beat-to-crap 10 year old Dodge Ram Van, and drove it like a 70 year old woman on her way to Joann Fabrics at 11am on a Tuesday... but one could assume that I was the one who caused the side door to fly open randomly, or required a piece of Cat3 tied to the read door latch to open the rear door. There never was a question, but if there was... they could see that I never drove within 5mph of the posted speed limit (0-60mph in 23 seconds flat - I timed it once). Also any of the old timers who didnt like it, always had ways to work around being "watched" anyway.

RM
Ryan McGovern
Jan 14, 2014

Good - from a service point of view it has cut down the number phone calls with technicans, reducung workload and noise.

1. We don't have to call them and ask where they are.

2. When a customer calls to ask if they on on their way to site we can deal with the issue on the phone without having to call the tech and call the customer back.

3. If there is an issue with invoicing, where the tech has omitted information about time on site from his paperwork we don't have to ask the tech to remember, we just look on the GPS.

4. When a customer calls to book in a service call, we can search for their geographical location and see if there is a technician nearby and commit to the work.

We deliberated for years about putting it in because we thought techs would perceive it as a lack of trust and leave. Not one tech left.

GPS gives service department staff back control and visibility of their fleet.

KL
Keefe Lovgren
Jan 14, 2014
IPVMU Certified

We have been looking into this for some time, not to track technicians but more so to locate equipment and vehicles in the event that they get stolen. We did utilize a service managment app for a while that used the gps in a technicians phone to locate them and "breadcrumb" how they got to and from a job... the breadcrumb feature was unreliable and some techs would turn the gps off on their phones... it is a good idea for many reasons and Ryan list a good number of them...

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