Saving Money with GPS for Trailers

Businesses save big money using GPS tracking devices on their trailers

By: Sean Kimbrough, October 2015

With all the discussion of the E-Logs mandate originating from FMCSA soon, trucking companies and fleet administrators, occasionally, disregard the significance of the trailer. All things considered, that is where the cash is, correct? It is known as a "payload".



The dichotomy of the trucking scene is - you can't pull a trailer without a truck and the truck is useless without a trailer (unless you are a show truck outfit). Trucks get all the consideration because they cost a ton of cash to buy, keep up and continue moving freight. Additionally, trucks are the area where the driver dwells - the human component in the business equation - and we would prefer not to undercut the estimation of the driver. Nonetheless, without the payload and the trailer, everything else is disputable.


Utilizing GPS for trailers helps fleet administrators stay aware of the following issues.

Stolen Assets 

Clearly, if the trailer disappears, so does the payload. Without the payload, nobody gets paid and the business owner trusts he has enough load protection insurance to pay the estimation of the payload. I have a customer who was responsible for delivering three reefers of make-up to New York from Dallas for the Holiday Season. He had been under contract for recent months and was completely safeguarded up to $1M USD for load coverage. Past shipments were well under his $1M limit. These three shipments were $2M each, $6m aggregate worth. Each of the 3 trailers disappeared the day after they exited the Dallas distribution center. None of them had GPS beacons. The client was looking at $3M of stolen payload NOT secured under his cargo coverage. It would have devastated his business and he would have lost all he worked for. Fortunately, every one of the 3 trailers were found, came back with payload in place and conveyed on time. He avoided a costly hit to his business and avoided bankruptcy.

Stolen freight in the U.S. is a $4 BILLION business. In the previous 5 years, events have declined yet, the dollar amount per event has expanded. There are 3 noteworthy zones in the Unites States responsible for the majority of freight theft: Florida to Chicago, Houston to Dallas into Oklahoma and Southern California. As indicated by measurements from Freightwatch International and Travelers Insurance, Florida and California have had huge increments in both number of events and amount per event from January 2014 through June 2015. As indicated by the same report, under 20% of the stolen trailers had a GPS beacon attached.

Trailer Usage 

Organizations with expansive trailer fleets now and again experience issues staying up-to-date regarding where every unit is located, where units have been, and completely using accessible trailers.

"We don't know what we don't know..." 

Business owners need to realize what stock is accessible on any given day to effectively operate their business. Most highly effective operations managers know what they have accessible at different areas through day by day, week after week, month to month stock checks. In any case, in some cases, trailers that have not been utilized in recent months "become mixed up in the system". Units that have been sitting at a client's distribution center for recent months can be overlooked. At the point when a trailer deficiency hits emergency mode at a trucking organization, all hands scramble to find every single accessible unit. Wild eyed telephone calls, messages and instant messages hit the wireless transmission towers attempting to locate every accessible unit. Utilizing GPS tracking for trailers can ensure all units are represented and being executed to fully use accessible stock.

Another client was letting me know that when he was contracted as the operations manager to a huge national TL transporter, his first obligation was to completely use the trailer inventory. He went through past inventory reports to get an idea of where all available units were located and compared that to current physical inventory reports and realized he was short 223 trailers. That is 223 trailers the organization claims to own however, had no clue where they are parked. How does a director completely use an inventory of trailers if the organization is missing that number of units?

Maintenance and Insurance Dates 

It's sufficiently hard to stay aware of Preventative Maintenance plans (PMs) and insurance renewals (RN) on an inventory of trucks, then including a sizable fleet of trailers can make it significantly more troublesome. Today's GPS fleet management solutions allow fleet administrators to effectively stay informed concerning every one of these calendar dates for their trucks which, without much of a stretch, can be transitioned to their trailer inventory. When the appropriate opportunity for a trailer's yearly PM is due, fleet supervisors can easily find the unit, work with dispatch to recover that unit to the terminal, perform the fundamental work and get it back out on the street with insignificant down time.

Same applies to staying informed concerning insurance RNs. On the off chance that an organization is working with different RN dates on their equipment, it can be hard to keep focused what should be audited and tended to. Today's GPS fleet management systems can notify fleet administrators well ahead of time of renewal charges with a specific end goal to appropriately review coverages, make corrections and submit improvements in sufficient time instead of scrambling to meet the deadline. Who likes to work under those circumstances?

In today's business surroundings, organizations are always searching for an upper hand inside against their competitors to increase value and build up ROI. The expression "Spend a little to make more" can, without much of a stretch, be connected to GPS trailer tracking. Most GPS trailer tracking suppliers offer lower monthly subscription rates for trailers than truck or vehicles. The reason is trailer GPS trailer devices only need to be pinged 1-2 times each day which saves money on the data exchanged from the device to the network.

For more on how EquipTrac can help save your business money through GPS trailer tracking, visit our website for functionality and pricing information.