Ever since 1996, GPS (global positioning satellite)technology has been used in vehicles, and these satellites can track those vehicles’ movements from high orbit. Something similar may be done to track handheld electronics such as laptops and cell phones by means of IRF tags. This is known as the Internet of Things, where mobile devices may connect to the Internet anywhere. Geospatial data tracking is done on those devices, while GPS fleet tracking in vehicles is more relevant to ther businesses. Fleet tracking hardware may be found in many Canadian snow plows, work vehicles, rescue helicopters or trucks, and more, and for good reason. Commercial vehicle tracking can be used to track the logistics of a team of snow plows at work, and GPS fleet tracking in Canadian cities can make snow plow work far more efficient. How might this be done?
Snow Plows
Many Canadian cities have to deal with considerable snowfall, and all of this snow can’t be allowed to simply sit there, since it interferes traffic. Instead, fleets of city-owned snow plows will be deployed to clear out all that snow, and a large city such as Toronto or Montreal may have many plows at work, especially during winter. After all, Canadas’s top 10 cities which get the most snow average 55 days each yer when two or millimeters of snow falls, and snow plows will be needed for all this. Montreal alone makes use of 172 vehicles to clear off its roads, and 188 are hard at work for the sidewalks. However, it is possible for this work to be done inefficiently if there isn’t proper GPS fleet tracking in place. And Canadian law often forbids wasteful emissions from idling vehicles, so a snow plow fleet must stay coordinated so that all plows have work to do.
When there are 50 to 100 different snow plows at work in a large city, they will need coordination their effort to ensure that 1) all areas are plowed properly and 2) no snow plow is left idling because its operator can’t find more work to do. After all, an idling truck is wasting a lot of fuel and emitting a lot of pollution, and just two hours of idling per day may waste $780 yer year per truck, based on a cost of $0.80 per liter of fuel. In more than 40 different stats and government jurisdictions across Canada, such idling is against the law and may incur penalties such as non-compliance fees for each incident.
The goods news is that GPS fleet tracking will prevent such wasteful idling and keep all snow plows coordinated. This ensures that all areas which need plowing get it, and all vehicles have proper work to do without wasting any time. No one truly has an aerial view of this work but GPS fleet tracking allows geospatial data analysis workers to track where the vehicles are and how fast they are moving. In fact, in Canada and the United States to the south, geospatial data analysis is a rapidly growing field for GPS work and the Internet of Things alike. Tracking devices with IRF tags in them helps marketers track population movements and thus plan marketing strategies around them, and the benefits of GPS fleet tracking for commercial vehicles is clear.
Other GPS Uses
When else might GPS tracking be helpful? Such tracker technology may be used in a company vehicle such as a car, transport truck, or even a plane so that its whereabouts are always clear. This may be helpful to ensure that a traveling business professional is only going where they are supposed to, and of course, this allows any lost or stolen vehicle to be tracked down. It may be tricky to find a stolen vehicle otherwise, but a GPS tracker will always broadcast its location and movement to authorized parties. Similarly, such GPS may even save a life when a vehicle is stranded somewhere due to a breakdown or bad weather or natural disasters. Geospatial data analysis experts may use this information to help rescue teams find these stranded vehicles and rescue everyone found on the site. If possible, the vehicle itself may be recovered as well, such as by tow truck or a large flatbed truck.
