Gas prices are rising -- get on top of your fleet now!

I saw this graph today in an Automotive Fleet email newsletter:



When fuel spiked last year, GPS Insight helped our customers save fuel by curbing idling, reducing speeding, ensuring the most appropriate vehicle was sent to a job, and that the efficient routes were taken.

Here is an article about how we saved a customer $100,000 EACH MONTH in fuel during the Summer when fuel prices were at $5 per gallon of diesel. Then the snowball effect saved them literally millions throughout the year.

Here is another article about how we send alerts to your drivers themselves telling them to stop wasteful behaviors.

Get GPS Insight in your vehicles and get control of your fleet. There are so many benefits, you will not regret the decision. Start with a unit or two to and see what kind of insight you will gain into your fleet. Call one of our reps at 866-477-4321 (1 for sales) and find out how we can help.

You can be up and running within 1-3 days with GPS Insight. Really!

[or you can buy a 1/2 gallon of gas with the money you don't spend on the product, per day -- that will go down to 1/3 gallon shortly]

Thanks,

Rob.

Camelback Mountain hike helped by GPS Insight

I decided to hike Camelback Mountain today -- I'll try to make this short (shorter than the 1 1/2 hour hike up & down the toughest mountain I've done in the Valley).

I couldn't remember where to go so I looked it up on the internet & then dispatched myself via my Garmin from my PC:



Then I created a landmark as well, while I was at it (note I put the "route me here" address where it should go, but then I outlined the whole mountain) :



Then I routed myself there with my Garmin by wirelessly dispatching my vehicle's Garmin to that location:



Turns out it was the wrong entrance -- I go to the other one typically, so I drove around aimlessly finding that, plus the REI sports place where I bought a new water backpack (called a Camelbak, coincidentally...) .

Running an efficiency report, I ran 58% more time and 20% more miles (since the miles I went extra were on surface streets, not highways, this makes sense):



Here is me using the EZ-1000 to track me up to the top (at 10 second updates):

Here is my driving around aimlessly, wasting time & fuel (green dots, vs. blue "optimal path"):



Then I get to Camelback, and send a couple SMS notes when I start, get to the top, then get back to the bottom:



Here is my track of the 1 1/2 hour climb to the top:



Here is an iPhone picture of me at the top, mapping both my iPhone GPS location (blue) and the EZ-1000 location (red pin):



But here is the good part:

Toward the bottom:



And at the top:



I'm a little sore after the 1 1/2 hour long trek up & back down, but the view is worth it.

And I even wore a GPS Insight hat...



Rob.

Tracking our new TV from Denver to my living room...

We just exhibited at GFX (Government Fleet Expo), organized by Eric Bearly at Bobit, which was a great show with 500 attendees.

Whenever we go to a show, we have a big 52" LCD at our booth. To rent a cheap 50" which has poor resolution typically would cost us $950, which is nuts. So I usually buy a new one at Best Buy for less than double that instead and store it in the closest office/friendly person's home for use in the next local conference where we exhibit.

Well, my TV just went out at home, so guess what? I get this one.

But shipping them is a nightmare, since they sit on a dock & stand a pretty good chance of getting stolen.

So I stuck a GPS tracking device, an EZ-1000 in it (someone called the device Telemundo, Spanish for TV, I guess...)

When I was at the Airport, I was able to confirm that they picked it up using my iPhone like this:





(Here is how to take a screen shot with an Iphone -- hold down the round application button & press the top power button.)

So I knew it made it off the dock and to a transfer dock to be shipped to my office (and then my living room...).

I was surprised to see they flew it, and our 900 lb trade show booth from Denver to Salt Lake City, then to LA. Hopefully we'll see the TV on Monday, and then I can watch TV again.

Here are a few more screen shots of how I was able to track the TV on the way from the trade-show:



I clicked on Get Directions to see how far it was, thinking they were driving it (but it's being flown apparently):





Note that it's at LAX Airport right now.



While it's in the air, we don't receive GPS or transmit location, since the plane blocks the GPS signal, but this is pretty good for determining roughly where a TV is. We are working on a different product which is better for determining an asset's location, even if it's well inside a truck/structure. But for now, we stick to vehicle, and the occasional TV headed for Rob's living room, and this does the trick. If it had wound up in a dockworker's home, we would have been able to send police pretty easily.

We only sell EZ-1000's for business use, such as for security patrols/bike police, etc., but those security-oriented customers occasionally use them to track things like this, & I'm glad we have this capability ourselves. We also use them as easy demo units, so if you want a very quick proof of concept, charge one up, stick it in a vehicle or two's drink-holder, & you've got a tracking proof of concept without having to do an install (which still is only typically 15 minutes or so).

Rob.

Rob gets a speeding ticket -- GPS Insight proves the speeding activity unfortunately...

So yesterday I took my 9 year old son, a friend and his son to the Diamondbacks game (they lost...). Thanks to Mike Greco at bluemedia for the tickets...

On the way home, after dealing with the 101 being closed (Arizona doesn't know how to work on roads without closing them entirely), yours truly got pulled over 2 miles from home after punching it to make a stale yellow light. In my defense, there was no one around (except the police officer apparently, who I never saw).

Anyway, I got pulled over shortly thereafter and was informed I did 67 through the light in a 50. Oops.

I haven't had a ticket for 15 years, so there goes that streak.

I got home shortly thereafter & guess what, he was right.

My GPSI-4000, which takes speed samples once a second, got me doing 68.

Here's a picture which pretty much tells it all:



Here is my idle stop while receiving the ticket:



I pulled over near a community's entrance to get over from traffic:



I brought an EZ-1000 with me for my son to hold on to at the game in case I lost him, & it was set for 10 second updates.

It got me at 67 MPH going through the light too:



So, the moral of the story is: I was speeding. It was literally for just a few seconds to catch a yellow light rather than slam on the brakes and wake the kids up (that's my story), but both the police AND my GPSI-4000/EZ-1000 caught me. FYI, the GO-3000 is equally accurate, and our 3500 lineup checks speed every 20 seconds, so it catches speeding, just not the rapid up & down speeding like I exhibited yesterday -- it got me at 62 MPH. To put it in perspective, many of our competeitors check speed once every 5 minutes and don't report max speed -- just instantaneous. We report max, instantaneous, and average, and this is detailed in several "speeding" related blog articles.

On a less depressing note, we had a nice time at the ballgame, and stopped at Alice Cooper's Cooperstown before which we tracked on the EZ-1000. I landmarked it while I was there by sending a text message of: 'gps rob 1000k landmark cooperstown' so now it shows up here like this:



A quick landmark report shows we were there for 41 minutes:





41 much more worthwhile minutes than sitting on the side of the road waiting for a ticket 2 miles away from home.

I'll let you know how traffic school works out.

Now that I think about it, had I been using my new Garmin routing capability I would have been directed to take the shorter path home after getting detoured, and would have avoided this ticket altogether... Grr...



Never mind all those other light green speeding dots where thankfully there weren't any police or speed cameras.

Rob.

Forgetting my car at the car wash (part 2)

I didn't really forget it there (yet). But since a few months ago I put an alert out there when I leave my car at the car wash for 4 hours or more, I just got this email alert along with a cell phone SMS text message alert:



I don't want to forget, then have to find the manager at the gas station to get my keys from wherever they lock them up at night.

So I'm heading there now, thanks to my alert. Here is the article where I set this alert up last time.

Rob.

Hiking to Pinnacle Peak

I live in a beautiful area with mountains EVERYWHERE.

Before I moved here, I would climb them every trip.

Now that I've lived here, I never do.

Today I took my 9 year old son and his friend to climb (hike) Pinnacle Peak, an easy one nearby my house.

Just checking the map of my trip for the day, and it's 7.8 miles there -- we stayed for 1 hour 23 minutes.



You can see that the parking lot was full so I parked outside on the street, and I got there at 8:40, then left at 10:04:



Here's a picture from near the top:



If I want to know how recently I was there last, I can quickly create a landmark from a stop report by clicking here:



Then create it, assigning to the Arizona landmark group while I'm at it:





Going all the way back to February, running a landmark report, I find my last time going there:





Note that you can go back >>> 3 YEARS <<< with GPS Insight (or more if you ask nicely) to get information like this.

Most competitors only let you go back 90 days & charge a huge amount if you ever need the data beyond that from them.

The last time I was at Pinnacle Peak was back in February, on 2/2/09, for 1.4 hours.

I need to get there more often. Now that it's hot again, I think I may need to wait again until Winter.

Rob.

Email Alert maps are back!

We stopped sending Email Alert maps a little while ago in order to revamp them [we wanted to send one map with all that alert's activity, not multiple maps with each email].

Now whenever you receive an email alert for speeding, idling, or odd-hours activity, it comes with a map to show you where that activity is occurring.

Here is an email I just received about Tony speeding through the desert on his way home from the Memorial Day Weekend:



Note the attached .png map:



Sorry to pick on you Tony. I'm sure it's 75 MPH there & you're only 9 over so hopefully they don't go after you for this...

Here, I'll pick on myself driving home from the previous article's trip [does the 5th amendment protect me against a ticket if DPS reads this article? At least I only averaged 58 the whole time.]:





Notice how the alerts are 20 minutes apart? That's because I don't want to be alerted continually, just occasionally.

I open up the alerts page, then look at the alert by hovering over the "i" for information:


It's been checked 370,151 times, and I've been alerted 600 since I created that alert.

Opening the properties, we see where it's set to only send every 20 minutes if the alert condition continues:



Before these changes, there would be one .png attachment for every red dot in the map. With more customers choosing to use 1 minute updates and 20+ minute alert frequencies, you can see why we changed this...

Since many customers have blackberry's and/or iPhones, smartphones, etc., now if you get the alert email to your phone, you can see the inline image to get a feel for where the alert is occurring as well.

Maybe you can go meet the driver yourself to discuss it...

Come to our main website at www.gpsinsight.com for more information about our alerts and maps.

Rob.