Fleet Truck Tracking System for Fleet Managers

Business challenge

Our client, a Fortune 500 company and one of the world’s largest cars manufacturer, wanted to explore the potential of fleet truck tracking IoT technologies in the light commercial vehicles segment. Following a consistent path towards intelligent connectivity, they had a vision for a new, fully connected, integrated system linking vehicles and fleet managers via car-to-cloud communication. This fleet truck tracking solution was supposed to benefit courier delivery services, car leasing companies, logistics teams, fleet route optimization software providers, and other commercial and government organizations operating vehicle fleets with the IoT development.

To realize this idea and speed up time-to-market for their fleet truck tracking product, our client signed a partnership agreement with a German software development company. But after about a year of active development, it became clear that the project timetable wouldn’t be met due to major issues in the frontend and mobile parts of the application. That’s when they contacted Intellias, a reliable provider of location based and IoT solutions, to implement a GPS fleet management system.

Technology solution

Intellias has become part of a distributed development ecosystem, developing GPS tracking for fleet in close cooperation with our client and an innovative German partner. We empowered our client with strong technical expertise and undertook a significant portion of work on their fleet tracking solution.

To align all stakeholders engaged in the production process, our client holds quarterly on-site workshops for exchanging knowledge, sharing achievements and goals, gaining insights from other teams, and discussing burning issues. Our experts also participate in regular architecture talks to consult and decide on necessary changes to the application so it meets current requirements.

Intellias is responsible for implementing native iOS and Android apps for GPS truck monitoring as well as the Angular frontend of this intelligent vehicle monitoring system. We’ve integrated maps, geolocation services, and POIs. We also provide UI/UX design for dashboards that provide data visualization and custom rendering.

One of our partner’s teams designs in-vehicle hardware connected to the CAN bus to collect information from various electronic control units. This team also works on the interface that provides two-way communication between the vehicle and the cloud via cellular networks.

Our partner’s second team implements the backend of GPS tracking for fleet trucks solution, written in .NET and hosted on Microsoft Azure. The backend solution is a modular application responsible for telemetry aggregation and managing data transfers between the cloud server and fleet vehicles. It also features an API that exposes telemetry and processed data to the frontend.

Our client’s truck tracking system is an innovative connectivity package that covers the logistics software development needs of its users. It captures data from vehicles either through in-car embedded devices or data collection adapters. With all data interactions occurring through Microsoft’s .NET platform, data is synchronized and transmitted to the database for storage and to the frontend for visualization.

Intellias is implementing mechanisms that allow fleet managers to:

• display real-time maps, POI search results, and precise geolocations
• specify geofencing areas on maps to control fleet movements
• maintain a full overview of fleet resources and the status of individual vehicles
• monitor vehicles’ technical parameters
• increase fleet efficiency and optimize navigation with real-time route and point-of-interest information
• assign drivers to vehicles based on comprehensive profiling
• use route planning and optimization software to plan routes
• analyze fuel efficiency and consumption during trips and take actions to manage it
• control a vehicle remotely – for example to start the engine or turn on the autonomous heater from a distance
• obtain and display immediate notifications from a vehicle about locked/unlocked doors, vehicle movement, geofencing zone violations, and more
• improve communication between fleet managers, vehicles, and drivers
• reduce paperwork by replacing physical logbooks with a digital log and automated route tracking, with individual postprocessing options
• utilize vehicle routing and scheduling software to plan drivers working hours
• plan export transportation and regular passenger transfers
• optimize maintenance planning
• specify a precondition – for example, set the time for charging an electric vehicle or adjust the temperature of an air conditioner
• receive real-time data updates through web sockets

Business impact

We’ve reinforced the implementation of our client’s GPS truck monitoring solution and helped them bring to market a comprehensive connected fleet management application that’s now available in over 20 Western European and North American countries.

Our client’s GPS tracking for fleet trucks solution has recently gone into production, and we are now testing it on a real fleet of 1,000 vehicles. Intellias is also supporting the platform and consulting on migrating it to the brand-new Angular 8.1.

The fleet management system we’re developing has already proved its accurate vehicle tracking services for locating stolen vehicles. In-car sensors can determine when a vehicle has been stolen and send notifications to the system, which tracks the vehicle’s current position and marks it on the map. With the help of the system’s theft warning notification feature, one of our end user’s trucks was recently found soon after it was stolen.

Here are the benefits that businesses get with our client’s solution:

• Cost efficiency through optimized fuel consumption and planning of preventive maintenance schedules and checklists
• Increased productivity by controlling routes, processes, delivery time, expenses, and more
• Fraud prevention thanks to geofencing, actual mileage tracking, and fuel tank level control
• Legal compliance through monitoring of compliance with driving and rest time regulations
• Ecological awareness and reduced CO2 emissions by managing driving style