September 2002

If you're hiring vans on long term, you can now hire a remote tracking and location system from the same company. Northgate group, the rental giant, has launched its own complete vehicle tracking and fleet management package, Norfleet Vehicle Monitoring. The company reckons users of the system can save 10 per cent in fuel consumption, 30 per cent on insurance and 10 to 15 per cent in overtime claims by drivers.

The on-board equipment consists of a GPS satellite-based location system and an embedded GSM telephone. All remote access is made via standard Web browsers.

Northgate maintains that its terms are less onerous than those for many comparable systems. Users pay a £60 installation charge, plus £2 per vehicle per month. That includes an analysis package covering "snail trail" map displays (showing where each vehicle has travelled), as well as customisable activity reports that can look at utilisation, speed, mileage, travel patterns and other details.

There is an extra fee for each live positioning fix (typically 20p), but Northgate says most trial operators found the excitement of real-time location monitoring wore off after the first week or so, and retrospective analysis is much more popular.

 

You can't order the system ad hoc when hiring vehicles on a casual basis; the minimum contract period is one year. But on the plus side, you can fit the system in your own vehicles as well as those hired from Northgate, and installations can be transferred between vehicles for a modest fee.

Northgate has several dozen individually-branded rental and hire operations throughout Britain, although recently there has been some sign of rationalisation and the adoption of joint identity among businesses situated close to each other.