Construction Company Protects Its Assets

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Commercial vehicles and equipment tend to be a sought-after target for thieves and vandals. And construction vehicles that carry equipment and tools are often pursued because of their contents, leaving companies with lost revenue, squandered work time and growing concerns for their company's security.

Because of these factors, one company decided to find a way to combat the criminals who were targeting their fleet.

Triple B Services, an excavation, utility and paving contractor in Houston, began equipping its vehicles and equipment with real-time GPS vehicle location and fleet management software system and has never looked back.

Stoney Welch, Triple B Services’ business manager, said the decision to invest in the Teletrac Fleet Director system was made following a $3 million equipment loss caused by a group of vandals in 2004.

Welch said Triple B needed a software system that would provide exact equipment location information, notifications of unauthorized equipment use and summarize data in order to project costs, automate vehicle maintenance schedules and provide comprehensive reports on fleet operations.

Since partnering with Teletrac, not one piece of equipment has been lost.

But that’s not for a lack of trying.

    “We’ve had some pieces of equipment taken,” Welch said. “But we were alerted by Teletrac, tracked its whereabouts, and then called the authorities. I told them where the vehicle was located and they took care of the rest.”

Another instance occurred when Triple B was notified that one of their vehicles was in Brownsville, Texas, just a few miles from the Mexican border.

“We had a piece of equipment that showed up down there and it was already repainted, fixed up and ready to cross the border,” Welch said. “If it had made it into Mexico, we probably would have never seen it again.”

A Fleet Director unit has been installed on every piece of Triple B’s construction equipment, which assigned designated hours for engine operation and the monitored by the software. This, combined with geo-fencing boundaries at each job site, provides Triple B with unique level of security.

If a vehicle is started outside of a designated time period, or any of the equipment is moved outside of the approved boundaries, a Triple B employee is immediately notified.

Beyond tracking its fleet’s location, Triple B also uses the data to document costs and monitors the engine operating records to schedule preventative maintenance. The automated logging of engine data has significantly reduced the time required for personnel to schedule maintenance activities and eliminated the necessity of drivers having to manually recording engine hours.

The company is also looking to Teletrac for more innovative software advances as well.

Recently, Triple B has begun using TM470R a rugged, water and dust resistant real-time GPS tracking unit. The product was designed specifically for  heavy equipment and machinery assets including earth movers, graders, backhoes, forklifts, compressors, large generators and HVAC systems.