Best GPS Tracking for Construction Equipment and Vehicles

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As your business grows and more assets are added to your fleet, you may want to think about solutions to track your assets. This can include monitoring their routes, tracking their location, or even keeping logs on how they are being used and the service requirements or them. All of this is possible with the right GPS tracking solution.

GPS tracking has become increasingly important for growing businesses to help find inefficiencies or to just track assets in the field. There are a variety of reasons why GPS tracking is important for construction equipment and vehicles.

GPS Tracker for Equipment and Vehicles

GPS technology for businesses are becoming increasingly prevalent. Especially those businesses that have multiple vehicles or assets on the road and job sites at any given period of time. The benefits to having some sort of tracking system in place for your vehicles are numerous.

From being able to find and plan optimal routes for recurring services to reducing theft and speeding up asset recovery, using GPS tracking can help save your business time and money in productivity and efficiencies. Especially as your business grows, you will want to have something at your disposal to be able to track your assets and protect them as well as your employees.

One of the difficulties to implementing a GPS tracking system can be push-back from employees. If you have a number of employees that have been with you for some time and you opt to install GPS tracking on their vehicles, they may be weary of this decision. This push back can be avoided if you are fully aware and understand the benefits and how you can use this information to communicate them to your employees.

For example, an employee may think that you do not trust them enough if you decide you want to track their vehicle. But tracking is just one of the benefits of using GPS tracking. You can instead choose to communicate that the reason why you want to install GPS units in their vehicles is to take action if an asset was stolen or to be able to keep track of servicing that needs to be completed on these assets.

There are also dashcams available through some GPS tracking companies and letting your employees know that you want to protect them and the company should there ever be an accident is a great benefit to have available. It is important to understand the benefits of these systems and if you would actually be willing to pay for these benefits at the size of business you are currently at.

Benefits of GPS Trackers for Construction Equipment and Vehicles

The benefits of using GPS tracking for your fleet include the fuel usage savings, performance and productivity, increased driver safety, protecting your assets from theft, better service for your clients, and the possibility of saving on insurance (contact your insurance company to see if this is possible).

1. Reduce Fuel Usage

Idling, speeding, and rapid acceleration lead to decreased fuel economy and an increase in fuel costs. With GPS tracking in vehicles you can monitor and receive alerts when any of these are occurring. That way you can spot these problems and coach your operators to help increase the company bottom line.

The larger the vehicle, the more fuel you are wasting when idling and if you are idling for more than 30 seconds you are using more fuel than restarting the engine. It also leads to higher maintenance costs. You can receive idle alerts through most GPS tracking systems. In addition to that you can get speeding and rapid acceleration alerts that cost more in fuel usage as well as adding risk and decreasing safety.

2. Increase Driver Safety

This is not only for your drivers, but also for your company image. With GPS tracking you can receive real-time alerts or notifications for unsafe driving. You can even receive safety ratings for certain drivers within your fleet and use that data towards an incentive program.

There are a variety of notifications that you could be receiving from your GPS tracking system in regards to unsafe driving including speeding, rapid acceleration, and harsh braking. There are even more features such as unauthorized usage outside of hours of operation, the first ignition of the day, geofence entries or exits, device tampering or when there is no signal, and excessive idling.

3. Save on Insurance

There is a possibility that adding GPS tracking to your fleet will reduce your insurance premiums. It may be beneficial to contact your insurance company first in regards to this to see if there is a discount or to even see if there is a specific partner that they have for this in order to receive a discount.

It is also helpful when you can highlight the benefits of the GPS tracking system including having your mileage handy, your commitment to safety with reports for drivers and ongoing safety training programs, the unique features of the tracking system including the reports and alerts, and possibly even send your insurance provider more information on the tracking software.

4. Better Service to Clients

We are all serving clients in the construction industry. Some have more clients than others. For example, if you are operating a lawn care business you have several stops to make in a given day as you would if you were a residential plumber. Having GPS tracking in your vehicles allows you to serve your clients better in these applications. Especially if you have multiple vehicles on the road and a logistics center.

Without needing to contact the driver, an office administrator could see exactly where that driver is and be able to provide an estimated time of arrival to a client. You can find and dispatch vehicles that are closer to your client to service them faster. Even monitor how long your workers were at a client’s location.

5. Protect Assets

With GPS tracking, you can be alerted when a vehicle is being operated outside of working hours. If a vehicle or piece of equipment is stolen, you can track it in real-time helping you to recover your asset. This of course is assuming that the thief did not disconnect the GPS tracking device.

6. Improve Fleet Performance

All of these benefits will help you improve your fleet performance. If you can improve your routes, save money on fuel costs, reduce the likelihood of an accident, better serve your clients, and protect assets against theft, you can improve your bottom line. This is where the benefits begin to make sense for GPS tracking systems.

Construction Fleet and Equipment Software and Tracking Systems

Along with the hardware that needs to be installed in the equipment or the vehicle in order to track it, there is a software solution that the hardware device feeds information to and allows you to monitor your fleet or equipment. It is important when choosing your GPS tracking system to also think carefully about the software that pairs along with the hardware. It should be user-friendly so that training does not take long when passing it along to an employee. It should also provide the necessary reports to allow you to optimize your fleet and equipment procedures.

Construction Fleet Management Software

With any fleet management software, there should be multiple features that allows you to customize the usability of it. This includes things like reports and alerts based on drivers and the vehicles themselves. You should be able to get real-time tracking data and see your entire fleet on-screen in your software on a map. Replaying the fleet trip history for any period is also a great feature to have.

Safety tracking such as speed, acceleration, hard braking, and idling and providing reports on these to provide driver score cards is another handy feature in the software. You should be able to get alerts based on unauthorized movement, arrivals and departures, idling, and to be able to access this from a desktop or mobile device.

In addition to all of this, the software should allow you to monitor vehicle health to easily stay on top of service and maintenance and the records to go along with their servicing. All of these features provide your company data on how you can optimize your fleet within your business and become more efficient, productive, and safe.

Construction Equipment Management Software

Whether you need GPS for heavy equipment or for your smaller equipment, there are solutions available for tracking equipment. This should be all under the same or similar hardware and tracked within the same software.

Most asset trackers are wireless and can be fastened to a piece of equipment. This provides you with the ability to hide it from sight so thieves cannot disconnect the GPS system in a vulnerable place before they start off with the asset. This allows you to monitor any asset and get notifications based on their movements.

Software will allow you to see where your assets are at in any given period of time on a map. Geo-Fences can be created within the software for both fleet and equipment tracking so that if a specific asset is moved to an unexpected location you can be notified. Assets that are idle can also be monitored to see if there may be another site that would actually put a piece of equipment to use where it is not getting used on the site it is currently on.

Construction GPS Tracking Hardware and Software Options

When looking for a GPS tracking company to sign up with, there are a few things to look for.

The obvious one is pricing. What is the set up cost, cost for devices, and monthly ongoing fee to continue with their services? Understanding how GPS tracking is priced will allow you to be able to find and compare the rates of various companies.

Another thing to compare is also service. Ask around in your local network if others have GPS tracking and see what their experiences are like. See any online reviews and what the sentiment is for those companies that you are considering.

An important aspect to also consider is the software that is behind the GPS tracking. Is it user-friendly? Ask them for a demo before you consider signing up for that specific company and see how the software is structured to understand whether or not it would work for your company. There is more cost to implementing a GPS tracking system than just the price tag alone. It will also cost you time in the setup and training process of getting your employees onboard with using the GPS tracking software. If you have another software like a Customer Relationship Manager or a software to help you operate your business, see if they have any integrations with GPS tracking companies. Some software has these integrations and you would need to use that GPS tracking company in order to have it all under one dashboard which can be beneficial to have.

Other things to consider are the ease of installation, the security of how they are installed, whether the trackers are built to withstand the elements that you work in, battery life if applicable, reporting intervals, whether or not it will work in any area, and whether or not it will work with your vehicles and equipment.

What is the ROI on GPS Tracking

Have you ever had anything stolen from you in your business? If so, was it a large piece of equipment? Did it hurt when you found out?

Have you ever gotten a call from someone saying that one of your trucks was driving unsafely? What does that do to your company’s image? What is the cost of one of your vehicles getting into an accident? What if this could be prevented?

We could go on and on about a variety of efficiencies and productivity increases that GPS tracking offers and compare that to the setup cost plus the monthly cost of GPS tracking for your equipment and vehicles. However, the greatest benefit is in the possibility of tracking your stolen equipment or the ability to give warnings to your employees that are aggressive drivers.

You do not need an employee hurting the image of your company or even worse. There are risks to having employees on the road and you want to minimize those risks as much as possible. This is the true return on investment when it comes to GPS tracking.

For us in our industry as landscapers, there are numerous benefits to using the right GPS tracking for landscapers as you grow your business. Especially as hardscapers being that we are so equipment heavy in terms of assets in our business. We want to be able to protect our assets from theft and to ensure that we are providing the best service possible for our clients.