Do you want to track an expensive asset or attempt to track an employee? If you want to track your asset, than a cell phone might not be the way to go. Fleet owners and fleet managers are always asking what the difference is between vehicle-installed GPS tracking vs. cell phone GPS tracking – here are the differences between the two:
Disadvantages to Cell Phone Tracking
Just because cell phone tracking is cheaper, doesn’t mean it’s better. It is a low cost solution because it has low end capabilities. A cell phone cannot monitor much more than a location. Reporting and alerting are bare-bones leaving too many unanswered questions regarding your mobile workforce. Yes, the upfront costs of vehicle-installed GPS may be more expensive, but think about the ROI – the big money is saved with a powerful vehicle-installed solution.
Cell phone-based tracking leaves too much power in the hands of the employee. It is simply too easy to “lose the phone”, “lose signal”, or have the phone battery “die”. All the employee has to do is turn the phone off if he/she doesn’t want to be tracked or leave it somewhere else. Don’t let your employees get in the way of your monitoring efforts.
Advantages to GPS Vehicle Tracking
Vehicle-installed GPS monitors vehicle location, current status, or problems that you want to be alerted about. You will also obtain vehicle data like fuel consumption, speeding, idle time, necessary maintenance, theft notification, etc.
- Battery concerns are minimal as it is wired to the vehicle battery for constant power. GPS vehicle tracking is always on, and always tracking.
- If the device is tampered with, you will know about it. The software will send you an alert.
- The big chunk of ROI comes from reducing fuel costs. GPS vehicle tracking reduces those costs in a number of ways while cell phone tracking will not help with the issue.
- Vehicle-installed GPS tracking provides improvements in productivity and operating efficiency that cell phone tracking can’t match.
- The software still allows for communication via SMS or email to a drivers cell phone or Garmin device mounted on the dashboard.
No matter how large or small your fleet is, there are more benefits and a much greater ROI with vehicle tracking as opposed to cell phone tracking. As we all know, cell phones are our main instrument for communication these days, but they are NOT developed to be high quality GPS tracking systems. Experts have found, and a majority of fleet managers that use vehicle-installed GPS agree, that the potential ROI far outweighs the initial start-up costs for in-vehicle hardware.
