I had an email from UPS notifying me of a delivery. There is a map used to track the truck. I managed to meet the guy at the door so that he didn’t ring the bell and awaken Mrs. Plant (v.3.0).
How is the truck tracked?
GPS, heck it could be a smartphone app. Tracking vehicles in real time is trivial. Have you ever used Uber?
Nope. Thanks.
…a map app is the slick trick to track trucks?
Just to confirm, here is a press release from the company that UPS used for its GPS-based fleet tracking system.
Thanks, Dewey.
Just to be pedantic. GPS on the truck is used to determine location, and then a commercial mobile data network (AT&T, Verizon, etc.) is used to send that information back to UPS.
May not even be the truck- it may be that handheld gizmo that they scan with.
But yeah, either way, it’s GPS and some sort of commercial network to send that location back.
All sorts of outfits do this kind of thing- companies, cities, states, etc… anyone who has a need to know where their people are for say… dispatching purposes.
You can do the same with your family’s phones via a smartphone app. The owner of the phone just needs to opt in.
I recently started driving school buses and I’ve heard the name “Zonar Systems” mentioned…part of the Fleet Management industry which deals with vehicle tracking and more…I don’t think our district uses all the options, but it’s interesting the level of monitoring that they’re capable of…
On the vehicle based ones, they can implement geofences, things like speed monitoring, etc… it’s pretty cool (and somewhat invasive, IMO).
I’ve seen video of a bus with the driver and a single student try to make it through a flooded area. They floated away but were not injured. I wonder if Zonar video got the guy fired.
A fairly big player in fleet management is Trimble.
I knew that some trucking companies kept satellite tabs on their drivers, for example how long they drive without stopping to sleep.
And equally importantly if they’re speeding. This is actually a good thing for the drivers since they can’t be abused and forced into unreasonable demands for quicker deliveries.
I have a dash camera in my car. It is not connected to anything in my car but the power port.
The dash cam displays the speed I am driving, in real time, just by my GPS location having moved a few feet. It is just about as good as the speedometer in my car.
I’ve been catching the bus the past couple of days and there’s a realtime app that tells me when it will arrive at my stop. Really handy!