It happens to the best
of us. You're on the road, pressed for time,
lost and without a map. It's for these
hard-pressed moments that the GPS was
invented. Most of us couldn't
find our living room in the dark. Why on
earth would you want to replicate this
experience while driving and carrying a
heavy load?
A Brief Introduction to
the World of GPS Before the 1980s, the
Department of Defense set up a network of 24
satellites that revolve in a precise orbit
in space in order to locate military
applications and devices and to calculate
their exact position on a map. This is done
through satellite transmission: The
satellites signal information to Earth, and
the GPS, or Global Positioning System,
receiver looks at the signal and the exact
time it was received.
The time is critical.
The time difference between transmission and
reception tells the GPS receiver how far
apart the satellite and the recipient are.
Once a few other satellites communicate, the
exact position of your vehicle can be
determined.
In this article, we'll
touch on two types of GPS products that you
may encounter when shopping for a device: a
"tracking" GPS and a "navigation" GPS. Most
people think of the latter when they hear
the acronym. It sits on top of your
dashboard and tells you inch by inch how to
navigate your vehicle to your destination.
A tracking GPS
typically will track the location of your
truck even when you've switched off the
engine. If your truck is stolen, or if you
veer off course, the tracking GPS alerts the
dispatcher that something is awry. It's best
to outfit your truck with both.
Huge Savings in More
Ways Than One
The idea of installing
GPS devices in his trucks occurred to David
Hunt when a colleague said he was saving
money with them. "It's a no-brainer," says
Hunt, president and owner of Two Men and a
Truck, Michigan district. "I only had GPS
installed in my trucks five to six weeks
ago. We basically used the navigation
software to get from our office to the load
site, and this resulted in better customer
service."
Minimizing the time
from point A to point B is critical in
delivering household goods, Hunt says, and a
GPS navigation device shows the most
efficient way to reach a destination. With
live traffic updates on Garmin GPS models
such as the Quest and the Nuvi, drivers can
get a sense of which streets are congested
before encountering them.
Says Hunt, "We have
e-mail notifications sent to us if our guy
drives over the speed limit. We helped
drivers save time and fuel because of these
devices."
Tracking GPS
By installing a
tracking device like the TrackNet GPS system
in your truck, you can, at any moment, know
where your truck is, how fast it is moving
and even if a cargo door has been opened.
When the vehicle starts moving, the device
transmits the data through a wireless
network by CORE and the back end
(operations) can see everything.
"The little box is not
super intelligent; it's the application or
the program that we provide that does all
the work," says Bill Cahill, Vice President
of Sales and Marketing at TrackNet Fleet
Tracking Systems. "Our devices grab the GPS
Tracking data and transmit it "Live" to our
data center (via cellular technology), where
we crunch this information and give the
customer a solid tracking product with
Detailed maps and Reports."
The average cost of
these devices is about $300 each, plus about
$35 per month, depending on how many bells
and whistles and alerts you choose to have.
Keep in mind that the
device is not like the TomTom navigation
GPS. If you want a navigation GPS as well,
Tracknet can easily install one that
communicates with the same wireless network.
The only caveat is that the driver will not
be able to change any pre-existing routes
without the approval of the operations team,
but that usually takes only a few seconds.
"Updates occur every
two minutes or whenever a vehicle has a
change of state: For example, an engine that
stops and starts again, or veers off
course," says Cahill.
Don't Go It Alone
You'll never really go
it alone with a GPS device installed in your
truck. If you're prone to traveling long
distances, particularly on different routes
each time, you'll love the convenience of
preloaded maps and live traffic reports.
And the ability to save
your truck in case you are hijacked is
priceless. If you don't have GPS installed
in your vehicle, you should consider it.
After all, the price of
the investment is tiny when compared with
the peace of mind.
