Are you looking to manage your fleet better and streamline your business operations? As business owners, saving time and money is always at the forefront of our mind. A fleet management software aims to cut costs, improve efficiency and reduce potential risks of your driver.
Before we discuss what the best fleet tracking apps are, let’s dive into what a fleet management system is and why it’s important!
What is a Fleet Management Software?
When managing your fleet operations, whether it’s a size of 20 commercial trucks or 200, GPS fleet tracking solutions are designed to maximize your time and productivity in regard to fleet management.
The purpose of fleet management is for you to have the ability to oversell all fleet performance, safety, and maintenance to ensure your business runs as smoothly as possible.
Typical responsibilities of fleet managers are overseeing fuel consumption, ensuring optimal route planning, asset utilization, driver management, vehicle maintenance, and implementation of programs to increase your company’s productivity.
There are many functionalities that a fleet management platform may provide, such as:
- GPS tracking
- Monitoring driver behavior
- Fuel consumption reporting
- dispatch and scheduling
- fleet maintenance
- route planning and optimization
- price and quote management
- cargo optimization
Benefits of a GPS Fleet Tracking Software
No matter the size of the fleet in your business, GPS fleet tracking services are vital to the success of your business. Here are the benefits of using GPS fleet tracking software in your day-to-day operations.
Real-time Location Tracking
Using GPS fleet tracking technology, you’ll be able to get real-time visibility into the location of your vehicles and assets. Most fleet tracking solutions also provide geofencing features meaning you can create virtual borders around a specific area to track when vehicles enter or exit that location. This is helpful for preventing and recovering theft.
Provide Accurate ETA's to Your Customers
Having access to real-time tracking of your vehicles also means that you can proactively communicate with your customers accurate ETA’s. This ensures that you provide your customers with a great experience and retain them as clients.
With a better customer experience, you will see a decrease in customer service calls.
Lower Fuel Costs
Many truck drivers will idle for long periods, such as six to eight hours per day. Long idle time for a vehicle means there is a lot of fuel waste. By tracking your vehicles, you’ll be able to eliminate wasted fuel and save your business a lot of money.
Avoid Hours of Service Violations.
The FMCSA has mandated that all fleet businesses electronically track their hours of service. Rather than using spreadsheets to track it, fleet software will allow you to track them for your drivers automatically.
Your fleet management team will also be able to view how long each driver has been on the road and when they need their next break to avoid violations.
Optimized Routes
Route optimization is one of the many features that make GPS tracking solutions worth the investment. It will automatically generate routes and assign drivers that are best suited for the job.
For example, you can set requirements such as drivers who are located closest to the job and most qualified to ensure you’re maximizing cost savings and reducing time for each trip., This means all of the routes will be planned for efficiency.
Improve Driver Safety
Fleet tracking apps also offer many safety features such as dashcams, driver scorecards, and real-time data like odometer readings, speed alerts, acceleration, breaking alerts, and more. As you analyze the data of your driver’s behaviors, you’ll be able to provide training and incentives so that they are practice safe driving.
By having dashcams and scorecards, you are also holding your drivers accountable for their actions and performance.
Best GPS Fleet Tracking Apps
There are many GPS fleet tracking services that you can use. But how do you know which software is right for you? We’ll cover some of the best fleet tracking solutions available and break down their best features.
Azuga – Best for Small Business
For small businesses, we suggest using Azuga since this is one of the few fleet tracking software solutions that offer unique tracking along with API and third-party integrations with other software.
Share live tracking with your customers: Your customers will be able to track the live progress of their orders by receiving automatic ETA alerts or going into their dashboard. As a business, you’ll be able to provide an excellent customer experience. This helps to remove customer support calls by proactively sharing delays and arrival times.
Protect assets from theft: With the Azuga software, users will be able to set geofencing limitations and alert you when vehicles enter or exit this designated location. This helps to prevent unauthorized vehicles from tampering with devices or using vehicles.
Improve fleet productivity: Your business will gain access to live vehicle tracking along with traffic and real-time weather data. In addition, this GPS fleet tracking software provides performance analytics, route optimization, and engine diagnostics that will streamline your entire business processes.
NexTraq - Best Safety Features
If you’re looking for the best GPS fleet tracking service that has excellent safety features to protect your fleet and assets, you should consider NextTraq. As a customer of NexTraq, you’ll be able to prevent smartphone usage while driving, track driver behavior, educate drivers using this online fleet tracking software platform, and understand fleet safety trends.
In addition, NexTraq offers driver analysis data, so you’ll be able to reward top performers in your business and help to train inexperienced drivers. Finally, NexTraq offers near-real-time tracking and GPS fleet tracking alerts along with many other services.
Driver safety: NexTraq has clearly prioritized the safety of drivers and has offered plenty of features to prevent accidents. Some of the safety features that NexTraq offers include an integrated dashcam, their patented MobileBlock, driver training, and awareness alerts, and driver safety scorecard.
The MobileBlock is software that blocks smartphone usage while driving. This means drivers can’t access their smartphones, such as texting, web browsing, or emailing on the road.
Fleet visibility and productivity: As a customer, you’ll be able to keep a pulse of how your fleet is doing using a tablet or smartphone. With the mobile app for this fleet tracking software, you can assign jobs, dispatch, add notes, receive progress reports, track your vehicles and see all of the metrics you need.
In addition, the NexTraq GPS fleet tracking service allows drivers to record their hours, contact their team and add any information related to the progress of their job.
Mobile workforce: Using this GPS fleet tracking system, managers will be able to easily create, assign and check the statuses of various jobs with their built-in schedule board. The app will also optimize the routes based on fuel economy and the shortest time traveled.
Drivers will also be able to capture signatures and photos in the app to update customers on the status of the job. This is important to verify details like customer signatures, delivery dates, proof of delivery, and more.
ELD compliance and maintenance: For any fleet business, maintenance and ELD compliance are important to manage the safety of your drivers and comply with regulations for commercial driving.
This GPS fleet tracking system offers features such as vehicle inspection, e-logs, engine diagnostics, vehicle maintenance training, and more. With the e-logs, customers will be able to input their hours of service and receive data such as drive vehicle inspection reports and records of duty status.
GPS Insight – Best Overall
GPS Insight brands itself as an all-in-one API-driven web and mobile platform for managing fleets. Their goal is to be a software solution that provides all of the services you need to streamline business operations, improve driver safety, reduce waste management, and automatic fleet maintenance and fuel management.
Here are the main features that GPS Insight offers:
- GPS and Telematics: Provides users with asset tracking capabilities, so you can view current asset locations, sync odometer reading, and manage DTC alerts.
- Fleet maintenance: users can schedule and automate third-party and in-house maintenance processes
- Fuel management and fuel cards: Automatically import fuel transactions, streamline fuel data collection and gather data of your fleet’s fuel economy and costs.
- Preventative maintenance: Receive alerts and stay on top of all preventative maintenance for vehicles and other assets.
- Reporting: Provides a full report that shows the true cost of running your fleet in your company.
- Inspections: Ensure all vehicles meet compliance standards with electronic inspections.
- Work Orders: Schedule, plan and track service jobs and costs.
- Asset Assignments: Assign equipment and vehicles to operators and drivers.
Teletrac Navman Mobile
With Teletrac Navman Mobile, fleet managers can track their drivers on the go. It’s available on both the ios and Android for convenience. In addition, this fleet tracking software offers insight into what the drivers are doing, where the assets and vehicles are, and users can communicate using one centralized platform. Some of its key features include:
Real-time GPS tracking: With real-time vehicle tracking, you’ll know exactly where your drivers are at all times. This allows your fleet managers to keep tabs on whether or not they are on track to complete their jobs.
Messaging: This fleet tracking service allows all parties to communicate, including fleet managers, drivers, and vendors.
Integrated maps: The maps are integrated with Google satellite for the most up-to-date information on traffic.
Easy routing: Once a request is made, this app will send turn-by-turn directions to the driver to maximize efficiency and costs.
Status updates: Fleet managers may receive access to vehicle statistics.
GEOTAB
GeoTab is a fleet tracking software that also allows users to manage vehicle inspection information and driver log reports all in one platform.
This is one of the best software solutions that can track the driver hours of service so that fleet companies are compliant with HOS regulations and keep their driving hours in check to reduce accidents. GeoTab provides tracking on all internal vehicle information, such as providing automatic odometer readings and managing engine faults.
Here are the primary features that GeoTab provides to its users:
- Truck routing
- Road speed change alerts
- Driver e-logs
- Drive and duty time audits
- Advanced sharp turn alerts
- Stop light camera warnings
- Adverse weather condition support
- Messaging
- Fleet inventory tracking
What is the Best GPS Fleet Tracking Software?
When it comes to determining which is the best GPS fleet tracking software, we had to gauge its available features. It’s important to note that the platform you use is dependent on your needs and the size of your business.
We believe GPS Insight is the best GPS tracking solution since it’s an all-in-one system for driver safety, maintenance, and improved efficiency. What makes GPS Insight stand is its diverse set of features. Many features may not have all the features available, meaning you’ll need to connect certain aspects.
For example, if a software isn’t able to do inventory tracking or log hours for their drivers, you’ll need to gather that data elsewhere and import it to the software. With GPS Insight, this is the only software you’ll need to manage your fleet.
GPS Fleet Tracking FAQ's
What should you look for when using GPS fleet tracking software?
When looking for the right GPS fleet tracking solution, you want to make sure that it has all of the features that your business needs. The software should have some of the basic functions such as:
- Live GPS tracking
- Driver safety tracking
- The ability to integrate with fuel cards
- ongoing customer support
- route planning
- dashboards that display key metrics
It’s important to note that most solutions should have mobile access. This allows you to manage your fleet anywhere. Ideally, they are cloud-based, so that you won’t need an IT team to set up the application.
Also, make a list of all the features that are necessary to you. Here are some questions that you may want to ask yourself before committing to GPS fleet tracking software.
- How many vehicles do you have in your fleet?
- What type of driver and vehicle information do you want to track?
- What is your budget for a GPS tracking platform?
- What area in your business needs the most attention? (fuel costs, maintenance, driver safety, etc.)
- Are you currently overspending on your existing software?
- What processes can you automate, such as routing, call scheduling, payroll, and driving logs?
What GPS Hardware Do You Need to Track Your Fleet?
You will need a form of GPS tracking device installed onto your asset or vehicle. There are many types but many are usually plug-and-play devices that can be easily installed and removed into your vehicle’s OBD II port. You may require a J-BUS connector for heavy duty vehicles and there are also provide heavy stick and magnetic GPS units for non powered assets.
There are common device add-ons that are installed for tracking, which include driver ID readers and dash cameras. This is important to hold your drivers accountable, improve their driver performance, and protect yourself from potential theft or false claims.
What Kind of Data Will Your GPS Tracking Device Provide?
GPS fleet tracking provides comprehensive data on your drivers and vehicles. Most of the standard information that the software will provide includes driver performance, behavior, vehicle location, fuel consumption, route optimization and navigation, vehicle health and maintenance, and fleet safety and security.
What Security Benefits Do GPS Trackers Provide for Your Fleet?
Most vehicle tracking systems have safety features that allow businesses to monitor their drivers, equipment, and trucks in real-time. Instead of hoping that the assets are properly taken care of, businesses can use GPS fleet tracking to keep their equipment and trucks secure.
For example, companies can use a fleet tracking solution to ensure that their trucks are staying with a designated area. Some fleet management solutions have video telematics features where they get direct insight into how the fleet operations are running. What types of businesses need GPS tracking?
Many businesses require GPS tracking software and technology to help with their daily operations. This ensures your drivers are performing at their best, and you can help to make their job easier as well. Fleet tracking software solutions are most common in these types of businesses:
- courier and delivery services
- logistics
- construction
- public transportation
- food delivery
How Can Fleet Management Software Help You Save Money in Your Business?
There are many ways that GPS fleet tracking services can save your business money. Since you’re receiving alerts about driver behavior, you’re able to cut down on unnecessary costs such as speeding and excessive idling time. In addition, you can utilize a fuel card to manage fuel purchases and streamline the fuel purchasing process through fleet management software.
There are other ways in which costs can be reduced, such as:
Proper maintenance planning: The fleet tracking service will provide automatic alerts to ensure proactive vehicle maintenance is enforced. Proper vehicle maintenance will reduce prevent costly trips to the repair shop for unplanned maintenance work. This could save your trucking company thousands of dollars in repair work.
Utilizing the right vehicle: With GPS tracking software, you can ensure that the right vehicles are deployed for each trip. Selecting the vehicles with too much or too little power will only lead to fuel economy inefficiencies.
Vehicle tracking: Location tracking and route planning is a crucial aspect to reducing costs. GPS tracking services will plan the most optimal route to ensure drivers shorten driving times, avoid traffic jams, reduce vehicle wear and tear and lower fuel consumption.
How Do You Manage a Fleet Driver?
The best and easiest way to manage a fleet driver is to use GPS fleet tracking software. This way, you can build a drier profile over the long term and are notified when drivers are displaying poor driving behaviors, not following the driver safety protocols, or being inefficient with each trip. Since you’re able to monitor the workforce in your company through a tracking solution, you are holding each driving to a standard.
Conclusion
All businesses that manage a fleet should have fleet management software: the convenience, time, and money it’ll save help to make managing your fleet much easier.
Whether you’re looking to track your drivers, vehicles, assets, or you want a system to automate things such as HOS reporting or maintenance tasks, a GPS fleet tracking solution can do it all. Understand what features you need and consider some of the top fleet service solutions listed in this article
