You may have not realised but most of us have seen or used this application in our day to day activities. These applications are in contact with drivers at all times.  They can be a small hand held device that you sign when a parcel/letter is delivered to you. This is currently being used by the Royal Mail for all of their signed for deliveries. The signature that you provide is confirmation that the parcel/letter has been received at the correct address. These devices are not the slickest in the business as the signatures seems to look like a scribble as the pads are not the best, but they are working at the moment to put senders at ease that there delivery has been delivered.

Previous devices have been tailored to the businesses needs; however, they are now available as pick of the shelf with a default setting. This makes it easier for the systems to be integrated.

The CEO of Trafficmaster seems to think that this is positive move for the company and will lead to the company being able to better capitalise on opportunities in their core areas.

As well as fleet tracking products they are also involved in anti theft tracking and navigation devices.

Although the company is British it generates 70% of its sales in the USA. This market is obviously much larger than the UK market as they have a larger number of businesses and vehicles on the road.

Fleet tracking products are particularly popular in the USA with fleet often having to cover larger areas than they do in the UK.

This latest takeover of a large vehicle tracking company is a sign that many businesses see fleet tracking and fleet management companies are a sound investment due to the potential growth in the market. Many believe fleet tracking products are not yet at their peak and further price reductions should help to increase the market penetration.

Other places where vehicle tracking will not work are in underground car parks or tunnels and also even multi-storey car parks. The reason for this is that the GPS receiver cannot receive the GPS signals if it is underground. In fact it use to be the case the vehicle tracking was unable to track vehicles in areas with lots of high rise buildings such as New York. Although these days this is not such a problem.

While vehicle tracking systems do have their limitations on the whole they are very reliable and do not loose signal that often. Sometime staff can tamper with a tracking system to stop it working, but once you know that you are unable to track the vehicle you will pull it in for inspection and the problem will located and dealt with.

Fleet tracking is another ball park altogether. There is a lot more behind fleet tracking than there is anti theft tracking. The question is will car manufacturers start to fit fleet tracking as an optional extra. Some feel this is inevitable. After all it happened to hands free car kits. Why can it not happen to vehicle tracking systems? Some lorries are already fitted with fleet tracking as standard, but it is expensive.

If you ask this question to people in the industry you will get different answers. Some think it is too much of a bespoke product to be fitted as standard, others think it is inevitable but will not be for some time and others think that it could happen in the next year or so. Only time will tell how things will pan out, but at the moment if you want to reap the benefits of vehicle tracking you need to have it installed yourselves.

There is a vast and untapped market for vehicle tracking. The problem is that many companies do not realise the benefits that vehicle tracking systems can bring to their business. If vehicle tracking companies are to widen their scope of sales they need to educate the vast majority of companies with fleets.

There is another problem. Many companies that do realise the benefits are not convinced that the cost of tracking will be outweighed by the savings they can make. This is also a job of educating potential customers.

It is thought that over the next few years vehicle tracking will come down in price considerably and when it does this should help to increase the number of people who take up GPS tracking. Eventually it will become more of a commodity. Once this happens more and more people will get it and then it will become a trend and sale could rocket.

Until then the vast majority of fleets go un tracked and therefore are unaware of the huge potential tracking has to save money and make your business more profitable without making extra sales.

There are mixed opinions regarding this. Much of the road safety work that is done is thought to be a complete waste of time by many people. Others say that lots of this work is essential if we are to lower the number of fatalities and serious accidents that happen on the road each year. Break have described the cuts as being draconian.

The truth is that there is a lot of money wasted on road safety, but there are also some very valid and worthwhile road safety projects which help to make our roads much safer. The problem is with the government going on a mission to sort out the countries financial problems, there are many cuts being made in all different areas and this is just one thing that is being affected.

Many average speed cameras have been proven to bring down the accident rate on certain roads, but traffic calming is basically a big waste of money and causes more trouble than it solves.

If you run a fleet of vehicles, one of the best things you can do to help road safety is to monitor your own drivers to make sure they are driving safely at all times.

Vehicle tracking systems can be purchased or leased.  Some companies require you to purchase the hardware, software and airtime, while others just allow you to lease the systems.  You may wish to lease a vehicle tracking system if you have no down payment to offer the company.  Typically if you purchase the hardware or the entire system you have to have a down payment and then a monthly payment.  There is also the option of purchasing the system outright, but you still have to pay for the airtime.

Here are the four options you can choose when it comes to financing your vehicles tracking system:

Self Financing:

With self financing you are able to pay in full or in part for the system.  This means you can purchase the hardware and installation at the beginning.  You will still have monthly costs for the software and data.  Typically for self financing you will be looking at 20 to 30 percent for the upfront payment.  If this is an affordable option for your company it is often your best choice.  Keep in mind though, that you may wish to update your hardware in the future.  This is one reason some companies go for the next option.

Leasing:

You can lease the system in its entirety.  The hardware, software, and data will all be part of your payment.  Banks tend to be flexible with lending the funds for vehicle tracking systems.  The interest rate is usually 17 percent for leasing though.

Pay as You Go:

Paying as you go for a system can be inexpensive.  Generally there is a 100 pounds deposit to get the system set up and then a monthly payment.  These payments may be 20 pounds. It is a very flexible option, yet it is expensive over the long term when you compare it to the self financing or leasing options.  It is a better way to go if you want the contract for a year.

Vehicle Leasing:

Perhaps the cheapest option is vehicle leasing to get vehicle tracking.  Not surprising, most dealerships who lease vehicles will install vehicle tracking.  They want to be able to find the vehicle in case it is stolen or something else occurs.  When you lease the vehicle you will have the cost of the tracking system included within it.  However, the system will have lesser capabilities.  Usually the dealership has a passive system to activate if a vehicle has been stolen.  For a fleet vehicle leasing is often not a choice at all.  Still, you know you have four options for getting vehicle tracking.

The value of a tracking system is in the software and data. Both of these are intangible assets which the lease company cannot repossess if the deal goes bad.

Yes some vehicle tracking companies offer pay as you go tracking, but it is more expensive and you are still required to pay some money up front for the tracking system. Something you don’t have to do when leasing a tracking system.

Some companies still sell their tracking systems purely via leases, but now many more lease underwriters are pulling out of the vehicle tracking market. With this happening it is becoming ever harder for vehicle tracking companies to find lease underwriters.

Some vehicle tracking companies underwrite their own lease deals, but usually only the bigger players can do this. Other companies use high risk brokers to underwrite their tracking systems, but this forces costs up and with tracking being a competitive market the tracking company usually has to absorb this cost meaning that their profit margins are made smaller.

You cannot do a great deal about other drivers on the road, but you can make your drivers are less likely to cause an accident. There are several ways of doing this. One, you can make sure they you give them top up training on their driving. Ask your drivers what dangers they feel they face frequently and what training they would like to receive.

Another way to improve your drivers safety is to use vehicle tracking to keep tabs on their driving habits. Many drivers frequently speed, accelerate aggressively for no reason or break late. These can all be tracked and if you have drivers that are not up to scratch you can give them the extra training they need. Also you will find that drivers that are tracked tend to break the speed limits less and drive more safely.

They have already started adding them to Berlingos, Relay and Dispatch vans, but now they will be adding them to all their LCVs.

Now that Citroën have offer satnav and anti theft tracking as standard on all their LCVs it will be interesting to see if the other car manufacturers follow suit. Indeed the question is probably not if they do it, but when they do it.

This could set a new standard that other manufacturers follow and it could be good for the consumer as it will not only save them money on their insurance premiums, but could cut down the risk of their vehicle being stolen at all. If thieves know that vehicles are fitted with anti theft tracking as standard then they are much more likely to avoid stealing vans and other light commercial vehicles.

The only problem I do foresee is if criminals work out ways to disable the tracking systems. They will have to be made tamper proof or at least made so that they are hard to tamper with.