A vehicle management system

A system has been developed and is now installed in over 2000 commercial vehicles which allows a company to manage efficiently its fleet of vehicles. The system uses GPS and an axle-driven odometer to determine the location of the vehicle but, unlike many tracking systems, the data is compressed and stored on the vehicle. When the truck returns to base, a low power packet radio interface is used to download the data automatically to a computer which maintains a database of all vehicle movements. The main advantage of this system is that running costs are extremely low because the wireless interface used to download the data is license exempt. Whilst the technology involved cannot be described as state-of-the-art, this system clearly shows how a careful combination of software and hardware can produce an extremely cost-effective solution to a problem.