Last week TNT Newsfast and Shell Gas (LPG) became the latest businesses to adopt fleet tracking systems to monitor and direct their vehicles.

The systems will allow the companies to use Global Positioning System (GPS) technology to pinpoint the location of lorries and check on their progress.

TNT Newsfast’s divisional director Mark O’Connor says fleet-tracking technology will be vital in helping the company meet tight delivery targets.

‘Our newspaper delivery business is one of the most time-sensitive products we’ve ever been involved with,’ he said.

‘It is like the transportation of body organs. If you lose a few minutes en route it’s going to cause severe problems.’

The Masternaut system used by TNT automatically alerts the firm when a vehicle goes off its prescribed route, recalculates its time of arrival and adjusts the routing of other lorries to help compensate for the delay.

Frost & Sullivan analyst Andrew Lee says fleet tracking technology in the UK has received only a cautious response from goods transporters, and uptake has grown slowly as a result.

‘When it comes to commercial vehicles, you are dealing with people who don’t really know too much about technology, they don’t know what it can do and what they can get from it,’ he said.

But the industry is being won over by growing evidence of the technology’s benefits.

‘You could be looking at potential savings of seven per cent per job on fuel, a 50 per cent reduction in administration costs through the automation of paperwork, and a 50 per cent saving on mobile phone calls as they are replaced by quick GPRS messages,’ said Lee.

These figures could improve with the future introduction of ever more complex sensor networks, greater in-vehicle integration between different telemetry systems and the EU’s Galileo satellite project.

Galileo will be much more precise than the current US-owned GPS, says Lee.

‘In theory it should also be more reliable, especially in built-up areas, where current technology can become inaccurate. Best of all, it should be compatible with currently available GPS technology,’ he said.

O’Connor says TNT takes a very different view of how the technology should be used in practice.

‘The kinds of products we carry can be very specific and each has different system requirements. We don’t just look at a system and say: “That is one we can use for everything we transport”,’ he said.

‘We have a fleet of more than 800 vehicles, if we fitted all of them with all-singing, all-dancing kit, we would maybe use about 15 to 20 per cent of their capacity. As things stand, all-singing all-dancing systems would be cost prohibitive for us.’

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