June/July 2008

The same technology that is used in commercial vehicle tracking operations can often also have uses in other market sectors – as taxi firm Davis Cars of Chelmsford has discovered. It is using the SupaTrak system from CMS Global to keep track of the location of all its vehicles, and says it is helping to plan and route vehicles efficiently.

Initially it adopted the standard SupaTrak package, but now it has upgraded to SupaTrak Mobile, which allows users to track their vehicles and assets whilst on the move using handheld computers.

According to Anita Davis, who owns and runs Davis Cars with husband Andy: 'Using SupaTrak, we can locate our cars and allocate the job to the nearest driver, which helps us to provide better customer service.

'It means we can tell customers accurately how long it will take for the taxi to reach them, and we can track our driver's progress en route.'

The basic SupaTrak system provides real-time location updates every 60 seconds and there is an option to reduce this to 30 seconds. Davis Cars is able to access comprehensive fleet management information such as vehicle location and speed and distance from a chosen point. The system also enables it to activate ring fences which send an alert in the event of vehicles straying beyond a pre-defined boundary.