07/03/2005

As costs continue to fall on GPS vehicle tracking systems, business owners are reaping the benefits. From an average cost of over $2,000.00 per unit just 6 years ago, now most systems can be bought for less than $500.00, and the return on your GPS investment can be as low as just two months.

Many new competitors have arisen in the GPS vehicle-tracking world bringing fleet owners more features at less cost. GPS Fleet Solutions is constantly examining new technologies to bring you the most diverse selection of GPS tracking equipment available. Let's talk about the history of GPS vehicle tracking and what the future will have to offer.
Before GPS:

Before GPS technology, tracking would occur by using a small box in your vehicle that measured and recorded acceleration, direction, and inertia. These were called Tacographs and did not use the government's GPS system. Once the use of the GPS system was added, vehicle locations and routing history became much more accurate. In the earliest days of using the GPS system, the Department of Defense had an encrypted filter on the radio signals beaming in from space in order to blur the location. Only government technology had the key to unlock the true location information. For a civilian or a private company, the best you could expect was a location within about 200 feet. In 1999, the government turned off this encryption, which allowed for much more accurate readings from within 5 to 30 feet.

The early days:

The GPS industry then split into two distinct groups: 1) Real-Time GPS Vehicle Tracking and 2) Passive GPS Vehicle Tracking.

Early passive GPS products recorded a vehicles route as well as starts and stops inside the device on a memory chip. Then once the vehicle was back at the office, managers or employees would use a memory card to transfer the information to a central database for storage and viewing. Systems such as these have been in place for a long time and some are still being used today due to the fact that they are comparatively less expensive to their wireless counterparts. Although the physical act of having to download information from the vehicle, and then transferring it into a database manually, could be a little tedious at times.

Early Real-Time GPS tracking systems could offer a fleet owner the ability to see live vehicle locations by using a satellite radio network to transmit live data to a central database. The equipment needed to make satellite phone calls was quite expensive, and the cost of using satellite transmission was expensive as well. It was basically the equivalent of having a satellite phone in every vehicle. They would work most anywhere, even in remote areas of the country. Because of their high cost they were used mostly by large trucking companies to keep tabs on Interstate travel.

For the small business owner, $2000.00 for satellite transmission equipment and $200.00 bills every month were simply cost prohibitive. Plumbers, electricians and service companies who wanted to track their local fleets would most often opt for a passive recording system and would build into their days a time for running out to the trucks to download the GPS tracking information by hand. The passive GPS vehicle tracking systems had a definite advantage at this point in time because they could record more information much more cheaply than a satellite system. They could be set to record latitude and longitude points anywhere between every 30 seconds or every few minutes. This would help the fleet owner see a rather accurate picture of where his vehicles had been. At this time, the real time systems were generally used to locate a vehicle when needed, and they did not tend to record historical routing information. Most real time systems at the time transmitted locations every 30 minutes to an hour.

Affordable Real-Time GPS tracking is born:

As the demand for cell phones and pagers increased, earth bound cell phone and wireless data networks began to build more towers into more metropolitan areas. As more customers signed up with the new cell phone companies, the monthly bills began to drop. GPS vehicle tracking companies began to take advantage of this new technology. Instead of using satellites 22,000 miles in space to transmit data, they began piggy backing on the cell phone network's towers. The first major network used was called CDPD (Cellular Digital Packet Data). Since then every major wireless carrier has devoloped a data network, and GPS tracking can be found traveling over all of them. Real time vehicle tracking suddenly became much cheaper for consumers as the costs of the hardware and data transmission dropped dramatically.

Real time hardware dropped in price down to about $700.00 to $1,000.00 with monthly fees dropping to around $70.00 per month. Now a small business owner could afford to track their fleets around metropolitan areas. They were constricted to receiving real time information only when a vehicle was in range of a cell tower, but now dispatchers everywhere were able to see their fleets in a whole new way; live as they were moving around town. These early cellular based systems were able to transmit more information as well. They would typically record points every 10 to 15 minutes.

Just five years ago, if you asked someone if they knew about GPS vehicle tracking you would usually get blank stare. Nowadays almost everyone has heard of this new technology, or has a friend or business associate who can speak highly to the benefits of tracking your vehicles with GPS. "To this day, I still can't help smiling when I show someone a GPS system for the first time. Small business owners almost start jumping up and down in their seats with joy the first time they see their truck drive off the lot and follow it as it moves on the computer", says President of GPS Fleet Solutions, Eron Iler.

The GPS industry built up steam as business owners nationwide began to realize the benefits of making their fleets more efficient and more productive. Costs continued to come down as the hardware became less expensive and cellular costs continued to fall.

Passive makes a comeback:

In response to the sudden popularity of the hands free Real Time systems, passive GPS vehicle tracking companies integrated either a 900 MHz or Bluetooth wireless modems to their devices. Now a receiver in the office could conveniently download tracking data from the vehicles when they returned to the office without a manager or employee being responsible for bringing a memory card inside from the vehicle. This is a good fit for employers who do not want to pay a monthly bill, but still want to reap the rewards of GPS vehicle tracking.

Passive tracking manufacturers were also able to take advantage of the fact that they could collect and transmit much more detailed information over a local wireless connection than their Real-Time counterparts. New algorithms were written to collect data during acceleration, deceleration, and during sharp turns, giving the fleet owner an extremely detailed picture of a vehicle's history. Real-Time GPS systems are still limited by transmission costs over a third party's cellular network, so the standard for today is a live location every 5 minutes.

GPS Vehicle Tracking today:

Today a business owner has three choices when they decide to enter the world of GPS vehicle tracking.

1. Cellular based Real-Time GPS Vehicle Tracking: Transmits every 5 minutes over a terrestrial cellular network. Average costs are about $500.00 for hardware and $35.00 per month for airtime with display over the Internet.
2. Wireless Passive GPS Vehicle Tracking: Detailed information is downloaded when the vehicle comes back to the yard. Average costs are about $700.00 for hardware, $800.00 for a copy of the software and database, and no monthly fees. Information is kept in the office and can be displayed over a local network.
3. Satellite based Real-Time GPS Vehicle Tracking: Less detailed information than the previous two systems but will work nationwide and is not restricted to a metropolitan area with strong cellular coverage. Average hardware costs are about $700.00 with monthly fees ranging from $5.00 per month for 30 locations per month to $100.00 for more detailed reporting.

The Future of GPS Vehicle Tracking:

On the horizon of the GPS tracking world, we soon will see the integration of point of sale devices running over the Real-Time systems. Within the next few years, companies will be able to have a wireless data terminal with the ability to take signatures from customers and run credit cards on site. Text messaging and routing will become easier as dispatchers and employees will be able to communicate back and forth. A dispatcher will be able to re-route someone and send new directions to their data terminal starting from their most current location based on the GPS signal. All these credit card transactions and messages will be transmitted to the hardware in the vehicle and re-transmitted over the cellular network to be approved or declined instantly, and the information will be stored in the company database.

These new systems are in early development right now and will eventually become standard with any GPS system offered. New LCD screens will enable Internet access in the vehicle so an electrician could look up a wiring diagram for a certain piece of hardware, as well as take advantage of in vehicle navigation and live maps stored on the data terminal's hard drive.

It's an exciting time for fleet owners as they realize the advantages of GPS vehicle tracking; and we here at GPS Fleet Solutions promise to keep our eyes on new technologies as we bring you the best of the GPS tracking industry. Thousands of small business owners have already helped their fleets and employees become more productive. By saving one hour a week or adding one extra service call a week, a fleet owner can realize a return on investment in as little as two months. Please feel free to browse our GPS vehicle tracking products or call us at 813-914-0202. We would love to share our knowledge with you.