Fleetmatics: Using GPS and tracking to help prevent vehicle theft

Nearly 708,000 motor vehicle thefts occurred in the United States in 2015, noted Fleetmatics, a Verizon Company, in providing some tips to help keep your fleet trucks from being part of such statistics.

"When you rely on a fleet of vehicles and drivers to get the job done right, generate revenue and keep customers happy, you can't afford to take one of those vehicles off the road for one second. But what happens if one of your vehicles is stolen?" reads a new infographic Fleetmatics compiled on vehicle theft.

Vehicle and equipment theft has hidden costs that ripple through the fleet. Those include lost revenue, decreased customer service, higher insurance premiums, a loss of productivity and driver and vehicle downtime.

The company provided some tips on how its fleet GPS, tracking and management technologies can help users monitor for and prevent vehicle and equipment theft:

•Use live mapping features with your trucks, which can identify vehicle location in near real-time and trace the exact route of each vehicle.

•Create alerts and receive notifications any time a vehicle is used after hours.

•Run detailed reports and view visual dashboards to monitor critical metrics like vehicle activity and distance traveled.

•Receive notifications any time a GPS vehicle tracking unit becomes disconnected.

•Equipping vehicles with a "driver ID" functionality can require drivers to "fob in" to their vehicle or an alarm will sound.

Here are some more relevant figures from Fleetmatics:

•In the United States, a vehicle is stolen every 44.6 seconds.

•The top 10 states for vehicle theft as of 2015 in ascending order were Colorado, Arizona, Missouri, Ohio, Illinois, Georgia, Washington, Florida, Texas and — topping the list — California.

•Also in that year, the vehicles stolen most frequently were all trucks: 2006 Ford pickups were taken most, followed by 2004 Chevrolet pickups and 2001 Dodge pickups.    

•Among heavy equipment owners, a sizeable majority — 83% — have experienced theft. Not quite as pronounced but still a majority of 63% of those who had construction equipment stolen never got it back. And nearly half, 46%, of equipment stolen was less than five years old.

•Of construction/ heavy equipment items stolen, most common thefts were of riding or garden tractor mowers, loaders and farm tractors.

For more info, visit www.fleetmatics.com.