GPS monitoring for international and domestic road freight

We fit high-accuracy capacitive fuel level sensors Escort TD-600 into the tanks of MAN, Volvo, Scania and DAF tractor units — one in each tank where there are two. The sensor is calibrated in the tank itself. The threshold at which the system flags a drain is chosen to suit the tank volume and the way fuel sloshes on the gradients of the M-4 and M-2, so that you do not get false drain events while the lorry is moving.

You see refuelling events tied to a filling station (SOCAR, Lukoil, Az-Petrol), drains above the configured threshold with a coordinate on the road, and consumption that falls outside the norm. The system plots the fuel level in the tank across a shift: a refuelling shows as a sharp rise, a drain as a sharp fall away from any filling station.

Once juggling with receipts at filling stations, selling company diesel on to middlemen and short measures at the pump become visible on that graph, consumption in practice usually falls by 15–25%. What that comes to in manat for your fleet is something we can work out from your refuelling records.

Take an ordinary trip: the tractor unit leaves the yard in Sumgait, loads at the port of Alat, runs along the M-2 to Gazakh and on to Poti. Here is what the system does along the way, and where its responsibility ends:

• The trip. The dispatcher creates a route with loading and unloading points. The system records entry into and exit from geofences, stops longer than a set time, and departures from the corridor. It does not handle the order itself or the cargo paperwork — those stay in your accounting software.
• Consumption. The fuel level sensor shows refuelling and drains, the CAN bus shows average consumption and idling. The accountant reconciles sensor refuelling events against receipts and the fuel card. Whether the difference is charged to the driver is decided by a manager, not by the system.
• Tachograph. If the tachograph is digital and the tracker can download from it, the files arrive without the driver coming into the office. The report shows driving and rest hours, but it does not draw up your answers to an inspection.
• Roaming. After the Red Bridge the tracker goes into roaming. At the border and in the Georgian mountains coverage can drop out — points arrive later, and so do notifications.

Responsibility for the delivery stays with the haulier under the contract with the cargo owner. The track, the time spent at each point and the log of body openings help reconstruct what happened during the trip and show it to the client. But they do not replace the CMR, cargo insurance or the terms of the contract.

The trip report we usually set up covers: tractor unit, driver, departure and return, mileage by track and by odometer, refuelling by sensor and by receipt, drains, time spent loading and unloading, driving hours, speeding violations.

The system rates driving quality across 8 key parameters: harsh acceleration, emergency braking, sharp cornering, speeding, long idling with the engine running, revs above the economical range, the character of manoeuvring on the open road, and acceleration on descents.

Each driver is given an individual Eco-Driving Score from 0 to 100. Careful driving saves fuel, wears tyres more slowly and treats the cargo more gently on the road; how much of each will show in your own fleet after a few months. The scores then form the basis for driver bonuses and KPIs.

In addition we fit door opening sensors on the body, temperature sensors for Thermo King/Carrier refrigerated units (monitoring -25°C…+25°C) and Howen video recorders covering the cab and the body. These sensors show when and where the body was opened and whether the temperature left the set range, and they send a notification to the dispatcher. They cannot in themselves prevent theft or damage to the cargo: the outcome depends on who receives the notifications and how quickly they react, and without a connection the event will arrive late.