Managing and maintaining a fleet of motor vehicles poses a significant asset tracking challenge. These large, expensive, and highly mobile assets have to be tracked and utilized effectively in order to maintain customer service and hold down operating costs.
Companies have increasingly turned to automated vehicle location systems to help track vehicles (and by extension their drivers), improve vehicle utilization and maintenance, and (when combined with other software applications) provide valuable operating data that can help improve business productivity.
AVL systems use geographic data to track motor vehicles, usually for fleet tracking and management applications. An AVL system typically includes a GPS receiver that is mounted on the truck or other vehicle, a communications link between the driver and the dispatcher, and software that can be used to keep track of vehicles and (in many cases) to optimize routing and scheduling. The software may include some type of geographic information system, a program that can store and manipulate geographic information.
Source: Integrated Solutions