Still incompetent after all these years ..

http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051026/OPINION/510260394/1030

Comparing county vehicle fleet sizes meaningless
Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 10/26/05
BY THOMAS J. POWERS
Once again, the Press has published an article under the banner of "news" that was critical of Monmouth County. This newspaper's latest muckraking of the county's vehicle fleet carried no news, only the goal of furthering its own political agenda. ("Driving ahead: Monmouth's fleet now leads state," Oct. 16.) County staff members have spent several weeks engaged in an ongoing dialogue with your reporter, and the fleet information was fully explained.
Early this year, reporters from this newspaper requested a list of vehicles approved for commutation. Soon afterward, those same reporters asked for a vehicle inventory. We queried our database for "fleet vehicles" and supplied them with that list. However, due to the way our database was constructed and categorized, that search resulted in some categories of vehicles being omitted. We have since streamlined the database to avoid this confusion. At no time were any vehicles unaccounted for. To imply otherwise is irresponsible.

Mr. Powers, to imply that you know what you do not know is irresponsible as well.  To imply that a problem was fixed when indeed it has not been is irresponsible also,
I posted a few days ago about the incompetent management of Monmouth County’s fleet.  Powers is one of the county commissioners, elected to serve the people and watch out for this kind of scandalous mismanagement.  
Read his article carefully.  It’s nothing but a string of excuses and obfuscations.  “At no time were any vehicles unaccounted for  ...”  Well hello, Mr. Powers, you queried your system for a count of vehcuiles and some vehicles were not accounted for.  The fact that after the newspaper took you to task you fumbled around and found errors in the system (who paid for that system and who trained county personnel in its use, by the way?  County the number of vehicles you own isn’t exactly rocket science..). Anyway, the fact that you manually found the vehicles in question after not being able to find them the first time via your official accounting system tells me that yes, indeed, vehicles were unaccounted for.  To my mind I still have no confidence that you have found all the vehicles yet.

Again I implore my readers to get on the backs of those who manage your government fleets and force them to be accountable.  Passing off bogus information and then back-pedaling and revising the info when a newspaper reporter proves he or she knows more than the responsible officials is not acceptable performance.  You can talk about how many people in the world love the smell, but rotten cheese still stinks no matter what kind of face you try to put on it.

California's Missing Vehicle Dilemma

http://www.telematicsjournal.com/content/topstories/982.html

Well, here we are folks, once again, another state who can't find a huge percentage of their vehicles.

The article I link to above actually promotes one of my competitors ... but I don't care. I'm so heartily sick of the head-in-the sand attitude of many of today's fleet managers that I don't care if they buy from a competitor, as long as the buy.

An average state vehicle represents an initial investment in the $20K range. Over the life of the vehicle the tax payer can count on spending that much and more in maintenance and fuel. Yet managers seem to think it's totally acceptable to have thousands of vehicles and hundreds of thousands of miles of use completely un-accounted for.

Next Tuesday I vote in a state election (Colorado) where the major ballot question regards letting the state keep a budget surplus that they are legally obligated to return to the tax payers. You just might be able to guess which way I am going to vote on that issue.

It's your tax dollar. Are you going to hold your state, county and city accountable, or are you going to let them play golf on the waste, which originally was yours?

Measuring and managing

http://www.khqa.com/news/headlines/1919942.html

This is just one of hundreds of articles and thousands of companies staring down the barrel of the same problem.

Fuel costs are out of proportion to profit potential and whatever the reason, it's not going to get better any time soon.

With most business costs, the old bean counter/belt tightener approach works fine ... business expense X costs too much, well the just put on the manager's hat and order everyone to buy less X. But if your business is trucking for hire, or you need trucks to move your only profit-making products, you just can't 'do less' ... profits will decrease faster than expenses.

There's a way that will help some businesses make it through this sticky wicket. The lucky ones will be those businesses who actually have a bonafide business plan. It's not enough to own trucks and take on what loads you can get for whatever price you can get .. you have to know how much profit is in each load and turn down those which just burn miles and fuel and break even .. or worse.

To do this, there's no other intelligent way in today's world than to track the vehicles with GPS. Whether you use the 'old reliable' Qualcomm or a cheaper, more precise system, if you can't measure, you can't manage ... and over this coming winter ... those who don't manage to manage properly won't be managing anything come springs.

Dave's thought for the day ... if you're thinking of buying a newer truck or expanding your fleet, wait until Q1 in 2006, there's going to be a lot of good deals on the market.

Does Business Have A Profit Motive Or Are We Just Playing Golf And Not Caring

Whenever I hear about national problems, the economy, education, war in Iraq, massive hurricane damage in the South, high gas prices, hard roads to profit in business, etc., and whenever I look at my company's sales record and listen to the often mindless sales objections from some business owners when I show them where their profits are leaking away and show them how I can apply a life-saving band aid.

A great many business owners just want to ignore the benefits of GPS tracking and waste reduction/profit enhancement, but there's one always notable exception... Golf Course owners.

See: http://tinyurl.com/dpxz9

No matter what the state of the economy, the country's fortunes of war, the season (hello, winter is coming on), there's always money to cater to add-on luxuries. When it comes to the (so-called) game of golf, I'm kind of the Furio Gunta type .. "Stupid-a f*c*ing game" but I certainly need to think about re-tooling and focusing my marketing on an industry who can use GPS, but doesn't need it, rather than on small businessmen who need it but won't use it.

Location, location, location, zero in on pinpoint accuracy

Some interesting news in the Mercury this morning:
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/technology/personal_technology/12982739.htm
Although the Mercury News is a much more technically oriented paper than many, they still manage to mix a lot of fact with fiction.

Ordinary commercial consumer-grade GPS receivers average about 15 meters CEP in today's world. CEP is Circular Error Probable and is normally specified at 95%. In non-gobbly-gook this means that 95% of the time you receiver will indicate within 15 meters (49 feet) of the actual position. The other 5% of the time? Unknown, but often very close. In my own use I have often observed accuracy at least this good, even better, provided the unit has an antenna with a good view of the sky. In a large city with many tall buildings the "urban canyon" effect can degrade the accuracy by quite a bit, but again in well designed units this degradation normally averages out pretty close to the commercial spec.

There are a number of ways of enhancing the basic commercial signal. The most common today is the WAAS, Weider Area Augmentation System, devised and operated by the US FAA to make commercial-grade GPS more capable. WAAS will usually reduce the CEP to 5 meters or less ... the problem is, so few manufacturers of consumer-grade equipment have come on board to use it.

The Mercury News article, though, makes one think that accuracies down into the centimeter range are still a research dream. If one has the need for that kind of accuracy, it's available off the shelf today from various makers (Garmin and Leica are two of the leaders) of survey-grade GPS. These units cost 10 or more time as much as consumer grade boxes, but can easily give centimeter accuracy with the right options and operator training.

So, what level of accuracy do you think you need?

Drinking and driving: Should laws get tougher?

Interesting article today that's not directly GPS-related:
http://www.bergen.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjczN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk1JmZnYmVsN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk2Nzk5MDk1JnlyaXJ5N2Y3MTdmN3ZxZWVFRXl5Mg==

It is, however a subject near and dear to my heart ... and it often relates to my business because many clients use GPS tracking as part of an overall risk management program that includes monitoring driving that indicates a high risk for DUI. One client in Denver found one of his supervisors spending night after night with his company-furnished truck parked at bars until the very wee hours of the morning and then driving in to start an early shift .. sometimes with apparently no sleep at all.

In general I think this is one of those national debates that shouldn't be a debate at all. I've been a pilot for 40 years now and the FAA rule is very simple .. no alcohol at all. The general pilot's rule of thumb is 12 hours, bottle to throttle. There are many cases where the case could be made that it's easier to fly under the influence than drive .. in the world of aircraft there are not nearly the number of critical situations per hour of operation than there are with driving a car in traffic, yet the rule makes perfect sense and I have never violated it, nor do I ever intend to.

If I take a gun and walk down the street and shoot someone, I'm going to be caught and charged with a felony, for sure. Almost certainly, assault with a deadly weapon. If the person dies, I'm going to be charged with manslaughter at the least, most probably some degree of murder.

Why have we spent the last 80 or 90 years or so arguing about various degrees of intoxication while driving a deadly weapon ... an automobile?

This situation would be laughable if it wasn't so deadly serious. if, as an example, I somehow slipped the bonds of sanity and decided to murder someone, there's no doubt in my mind how I'd do it. I'd have a few drinks to get some alcohol in my system, lie in wait for the victim and run them down. When i was sure they were dead I'd chug-a-lug some more booze so that by the time the police got there I'd be well and surely drunk.

What would I get? In many states, with no prior record perhaps a fine and probation .. maybe six months in jail as the worst case. is there any other method of murder one can think of where the potential penalties are anywhere near as low?

I thought the statistics for DC were especially interesting. look at the reduction in deaths with their .01 BAC law. I drove for some years in Japan where they take things even more seriously .. the police have a wand that measures the presence of alcohol in the air .. they stick it in your car window, it comes up positive, you're busted.

Do we want to save lives, or do we want to argue and make the lawyers rich?

There's much more to GPS than navigation or tracking 'things'

Many of my readers know that I have a significant interest in the Philippines ... in fact, sometime over the next few years I intend to make the country my permanent home. An acquaintance of mine publishes an interesting blog that frequently revolves around Philippine politics:
http://houseonahill.net/
While posting a reply to one of her recent blog entries on the rights of farmers in her country, I decided I'd repost the comment here to broaden its audience.

So many of us in today's world think only of GPS as a technogeek tool for business and personal pleasure, but GPS has the power to effect dramatic and dynamic change in people's and nation's lives. So here's my morning post to the "Sassy Lawyer"
----------
Very good topic, and good analysis, Sassy. For some reason we seem to have lost the focus on the economics of agriculture that is the true basis for a nations wealth.

The US did not become rich because of some magic after a group of generally poor rag-tag revolutionaries declared their independence, it became rich because it became the food supplier for the world, based on a political system that gave farmers substantial 'say' in government.

When I was a schoolboy and first became aware of the Philippines, it seemed a success story of a former commonwealth/possession becoming independent and feeding itself and a large portion of Asia.

40 years later the Philippines imports a huge fraction of its food and, as you point out, farmers are disenfranchised over huge segments of Philippine agriculture.

One of my technical specialties is the GPS and ways to apply its use to business and government. The first significant non-defense government use of the system I became aware of was a huge land reform program in Thailand where GPS was used to survey large land owner's holding for equitable distribution to tenant (serf) farmers. The large landowners had lobbied for years that the cost of breaking up the land by standard survey methods was cost-prohibitive. It may not be a coincidence that since significant land reform has taken place over the last 20 years in Thailand (synopsis here: http://tinyurl.com/be3y4), the rice import/export positions of the Philippines and Thailand have essentially reversed.

Although removing farmers from serfdom is a significant cause in and of itself, the benefits to the nation would prove tremendously larger than just the primary issue of 'doing the right thing' ... in spite of all the known and imagined defects of presidents and their governments the underlying cause of many of today's Philippine national 'ills' is rooted in the abject failure of Asia's best agrarian system being allowed to deteriorate to one of the worst.

All the Si's and Ayala's can not make the country whole unless there are 'common folk' with enough money to shop in the malls and subscribe to the telephone services.

Again. a worthy subject for future attention, should you feel so inclined.

Best regards
Dave
-----------------

GPS and Domestic Violence

A good article in the Boston Globe today that attempts to address a problem that we, as a nation, are just doing abysmally at solving. Full text:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2005/10/21/gps_urged_vs_domestic_violence/

About 1500 women are killed each year by violent partners (almost always males)(Source: FBI Uniform Crime Statistics). There is no reliable statistic for the number of women beaten, but one empirically knows it's much higher than those killed ... this alone is a comment on our society in that the predominantly male FBI doesn't even bother with beatings ... must be many men out there who believe a wife is always someone who can benefit from a good thumping when she's 'wrong'. There's some dynamic in the human male that seems to bring out the worst whenever marriage/partnership relationships 'go south'.

The legal 'cure' is for a woman who feels threatened to obtain a TRO ... Temporary Restraining Order from a court to instruct the potentially abusive partner to leave her (and her children) alone. Frequently these TROs contain provisions that restrict the subject of the order from approaching the protected person closer than a certain distance.

I don't have a firm statistic but it appears that a huge percentage of physically abused or murdered persons were already under the "protection" of a TRO. If a man takes the notion to go wild and commit violence the existence of a piece of paper from a civil court instructing him not to do so has little or no effect. A person with murder in their heart knows that if apprehended they face severe criminal charges .. the addition of some civil penalty on top of that has little more weight than a fly.

The Massachusetts initiative has two very important features. Number one, unless violation of a TRO is made a felony there is little police can do ... as it exists today in many states violating a civil TRO has about the same legal consequences as failing to license your dog. This places law enforcement in a no-win situation. If the suspected offender brandishes a weapon or makes other obvious threats then he/she can be arrested on some criminal charge ... but absent any evidence of criminal activity, violating the TRO is not really something the police can do much about.

The second important point is the proposal to use GPS devices to monitor the compliance with the order. At such a nominal cost, $10 a day, it sounds like a real bargain to the state. if it were my program, I'd impose the daily monitoring fee upon the subject ... and perhaps refund him at a later date for good behavior if the order was never violated. I don't know how good the chances are for this initiative but I applaud it and hope the idea spreads to other states.

There's an old fable about a dangerous cliff and the debate by authorities if it would be more practical to put a safety railing at the top of the cliff or station and ambulance down at the bottom. As of today, the USA's main response to domestic violence has been to place the ambulance at the bottom. Guardrails (or GPS) could save more lives and cost a lot less both in dollars and in pain.

Thrifty Car Rental Introduces GPS Navigation

Thrifty Car Rental Introduces GPS Navigation

TULSA, Okla., Oct. 18 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Thrifty Car Rental, a subsidiary of Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group, Inc. (NYSE: DTG - News), today announced it would begin offering GPS-enabled (Global Positioning System) navigation via an optimized Garmin StreetPilot c330 at 138 popular locations in the U.S. and Canada effective October 18, 2005.
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/051018/datu057.html?.v=19

Here’s another blessing/curse, depending upon the feelings of the rental company. Those who see every GPS offering as an intrusive snoop into their private lives are going to feel it’s just more ‘big brother’ in action. In fairness, Thrifty is doing this right, because it’s a service the customer has to ask for _and pay for_ … more on that below.

For those of us who use rental cars frequently in unfamiliar areas it’s definitely a blessing. Wish I had a dollar for every time I blasted past my hotel and had to back track, tired, distracted and short on sleep before an early morning meeting. Worse yet is the mad dash to the airport wondering where the closest gas station is so I can fuel my rented chariot and zip on into the vehicle turn-in lane without going miles out of the way or making a U-turn across lanes of busy traffic.

I can see a business reason behind Thrifty’s daily charge … $9.95… what goes on a vehicle has to be paid for or there’s no reason to be in the rental business, but I must say the amount seems a little ridiculous in today’s world of falling electronic prices. The average rental car is kept in service for 2 years or 20,000 miles. I’m pretty sure that means each car will be rented out several hundred times. Don’t know exactly how much Thrifty is paying for these units but the current street price is well under $1,000 in single quantities so one can be pretty sure Thrifty paid a lot less in quantity. There is essentially no operating cost … perhaps $50 each to install in each vehicle … so Thrifty stands to make at least 200% profit on the deal. Even though I’m a dyed in the wool GPS enthusiast I would have to think twice before I added $10 bucks a day plus tax to my own bill.

That brings up what I feel is the most important thing to glean from this announcement. Even though GPS devices are making their way into the consumer world in ever increasing areas, they are still being treated as a luxury or ‘gizmo’ rather than the utility that they truly are. If I were setting up “Dave’s Auto Rent” you can be sure that GPS would form one of the backbones of my business … as would on-site refueling … one of the biggest detriments to rental convenience.

If I invest money in #20,000 plus automobile and rent them out to ever Tom, Dick and Mary I want to be able to know where they are and how badly they are being abused. Instead of a thousand-dollar receive only unit that gives drivers directions, I’d use a system that duplicated the Street Pilot’s feature plus enabled me to locate the vehicle at any time. The loss prevention and risk management factors alone can pay for the system in a year, easily.

The second biggest profit disincentive I see is the abysmal state of fuel handling. Rental car companies either try to sell you a full tank of gas and let you give up the amount that’s in the car when you return it .. what if you buy a full tank and only drive 40 or 50 miles? Or else let you wander around trying to find a place to fill up before turn-in. Not only are both of these options customer-unfriendly, but they cost money … because they take time and when a customer has a car for a day and is wandering around looking for gas the car can’t be rented out to another customer, the same day, exactly as it can be as soon as the first client returns it. It’s absolutely dumb not to have fuel available and just charge the customer market rate for the fuel used … the cars that go out with the ‘return empty’ option get filled up before re-rent anyway … they companies are already providing the service to a significant fraction of their users, so why not just save the wasted time … and make a lot of satisfied customers.

When I rent a car for business I go completely on price … all the “Hertz Number One” services in the world are not worth any extra costs to me … but if a company saw the way to maximize their rate of return on the rental by giving me guidance and a sensible deal on the fuel I’d become a ‘one brand’ guy overnight.

Driving Ahead .. Taking The Lead in Bad Management

Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 10/16/05BY BOB CULLINANESTAFF WRITER
A new inventory of Monmouth County vehicles reveals the county has 1,049 cars, trucks and buses, which makes it the largest county vehicle fleet in the state.It is an increase of 188 vehicles over the inventory the county reported five months ago.... (full article here:
http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051016/NEWS/510160427

There have been times I am discounted or shunted aside as just a grouchy old curmudgeon. Well, I am older than some (60 this year, the start of middle age, yes?) and I probably am a curmudgeon, but that doesn't make my ideas any less valuable.

There are about 3200 counties in the United States (Parishes in Louisiana and Boroughs in Alaska) (and 10 or so equivalent subdivisions in each Canadian Province) and a great many of them are operating no better than Monmouth County, New Jersey. Imagine personally not knowing where 118 vehicles are .. not being able to count your personal or business assets within a hundred or so when asked for an official inventory? If it were your personal bank funds you'd probably be filing bankruptcy, or your business would be in tax court.

On average the managers of these entities earn on average over $68,000 a year to take care of your tax dollar.

It's time now that you, as an individual tax payer to take a stand and demand better. It's no secret that I sell GPS services to counties, other political sub-divisions and individual businesses. This is not, however, a sales pitch for my services.

If your county (city, state, etc.) doesn't know within a hundred or so vehicles how many they spent your money on, if they are furnishing take home vehicles to hundreds of government employees, then they don't need GPS ... at least not at first ... they need a good swift kick in the you-know-where to get them earning their $68K per year.

It's up to you, as individual citizens .. no one curmudgeon can handle 3000 plus counties. (If you want to know my reputation with the manager of my home county fleet ... just call him ... he doesn't want to manage or be manged... what about yours?

It's not just tracking driver's lunch hours, GPS can be life itself

Terrence Nguyen has a neat article in Fleetowner about (old) new technology helping trucking companies help others: HURRICANE IMPACT: How one carrier rode to the rescue by Terrence Nguyen, web editor.

After Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast, fleets turned to satellite communication systems as the only reliable means of communication when cellular links and landlines failed. Pelzer, SC-based Owen-Kennedy Specialized Transport sent a 4x4 pickup -- normally used to tow horses to horse shows -- equipped with a Qualcomm OmniTRACS mobile communications system to Bay St. Louis, MS. The pickup was used to find a route for a larger truck, also equipped with the system and hauling a trailer full of supplies, to reach the Bay St. Louis area....

The Owen-Kennedy folks use the venerable OmniTracs product from my friends at Qualcomm. Although the design is dated and the system is expensive the OmniTRACS is what old time bush pilots called "hell for stout" ... they just keep working and producing profit for their users and enhancing safety for their equipped drivers ... and everyone that driver can see and assist.

Friends of mine from a small company here in the Springs, Insite Technologies have been working a pilot program for the American Red Cross using a system similar to OmniTRACS but updated and streamlined for today's market. When the storm hit they packed up some spare truck units, demonstration equipment and some loaners from the manufacturer, EMS Technologies . More than 20 units were installed under field conditions and the Red Cross immediately put the, to work tracking vital post-Katrina relief supplies and personnel.

Then came Rita. Several times Red Cross vehicles were the only source of communicating for a number of towns in the storm's path. Many folks just don't know how devastating the loss of communication in a major storm can be. Naturally, you can forget about wired terrestrial phones ... they stop working for days or weeks until cables and microwave kinks are repaired. The cellular phone system, voice and data actually is just an overlay to the wired phone system and is built even less robustly, so it's either out of service, or in the rare case that a cell site is working, it's overloaded immediately. Even voice satellite phones suffer from extreme weather conditions and often fail to connect in the worst weather. The only reliably means of getting through is a system that uses satellites to send and receive the data and that operates at a frequency which is not severely affected by weather ... here's one example, the MSAT system which orbits continuously in the southern sky over the US. No weather or terrorists events on earth can affect these birds.

If you need to talk about these kind of systems or want to learn more about communications that just won't stop, just give me a shout.

Pay your insurance by the mile? Can do

Now here's a pretty thoughtful and intelligent use for vehicle GPS tracking. One of those, "Wow, why didn't I think of that" ideas:
http://www.trafficmaster.co.uk/shownews.cfm?num=375

Basically, an insurance company is going to charge for auto insurance by use. Makes sense when you stop to think about it. If a driver happens to use his vehicle very little, he or she pays an extraordinarily high cost per mile driven for insurance. If our example is is very high mileage driver, he or she is getting a bargain per mile and the insurance company is far more exposed.

Stick an unobtrusive tracker on the vehicle and the insurer can charge exactly the amount that is fair to both customer and client. They don't mention it in the press release, but th opportunity for performance monitoring is certainly there ... detecting excessive speed and other high risk behaviors.

Too much like big brother? For some, perhaps, but the alternative is everyone paying too much (to cover unknown eventualities) for a service which ought to be easily measurable and billable.

Oh, an yes, perhaps save a few lives too.

Cabbies protest proposal to install GPS in vehicles

Well, here we go again with more drivers who are used to running amok and acting like they have a license to steal from management whining, complaining and protesting about a system that actually could help them stay safer and earn more money. read the Newsday article here:
http://tinyurl.com/comb9

Basically the New York Taxi Commission, sick of the complaints from drivers "taking the long way 'round", congregating in parts of the city so there are no cabs in others and in general being the but of jokes and war stories world-wide has decided to discuss having new cabs equipped with GPS.

The drivers, somewhat understandably, don't want to hear about it, because they have been left to run their cabs any which way they want to since the days the cabs were horse drawn.

Not only would modern technology eliminate arguments of abuse ... thereby protecting the driver for false accusations just as much as protecting the traveling public from rip offs, but it's a proven fact that GPS-dispatched cabs have a higher load factor .. and drivers only make money when the flag is down and they are carrying fares.

The costs quoted in the article are absolutely bogus .. it's disappointing to me that every reporter in the 20 or 30 repetitions of this article has just repeated them as if they were fact ... a decent system, per cab could be had for $5 or $600 with costs for dispatch, control and safety messages on the order of a dollar per shift. Sometimes I wonder if the 21st century will ever get here.

Take Better Care of your Teen -- Send Him To Iraq

Hmmm, didn't much like that headline, did you? Given the socioeconomic strata and the average political leanings of most prolific blog readers, we don't have a lot of rabid hawks here. Ever notice how Michael Moore couldn't even get an answer out of most of our esteemed legislators when he asked them why _their_ kids weren't in the war they delight in sending others to?

Well, let's not get too deep into politics. Read this and then come back to see me, 'k?
http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/local/states/south_carolina/counties/york/12736335.htm

Parents, we are doing a DAMN poor job of raising our teens ... especially boys ...when it comes to automobiles and driving. We can't do anything about wars, natural disasters or disease but we can do a LOT when it comes to keeping them safe on the road. The cost ranges from zero dollars to small investments, less than you probably spend in expensive designer sneakers and ripped up jeans that the kid just 'as to have'.

But there is a cost ... it's not in money, it's in responsibility. You have got to have the guts to say No when a no is needed. You have got so spend time actual trying to teach skills rather than marking time until the state issues them a license. You've learned a lot over the past 20 years of driving, how much are you passing on (including the embarrassing incidents you learned from the hard way?)

Commercial driving schools can be good, but often a trusted friend with a good head on his or her shoulders can do a lot to help as well. trade off instruction and check rides with a neighbor's son or daughter. It's very surprising how little interaction any teen has with adults aside from his/her parents. You'd be amazed how much a friend's son or daughter will value your opinion as well.

Think about monitoring your teen's destinations and driving habits. This is the number one way you can keep them alive. Is there a cost? Yup ... but what's the cost of a funeral ... or lifetime of rehab in a spinal cord injury hospital? Put a GPS unit on their vehicle. If you're serious about wanting to keep them alive, and you have the gumption to actually _be_ responsible for their behavior, use GPS unit that monitors their seatbelt use. Yes, there are ones out there (disclaimer, I sell one brand that does, there are others) and yes they do save lives. The statistic in the article I recommended that bothers me most? The distressingly small number of teens who wear seat belts. No matter what our age or driving skills we can make a mistake ... it's part of being human. A simple piece of nylon webbing can make the difference between a scare or a fender-bender and a lifetime of tradgedy.

Make it click, no matter what else you do.

Make $500 a Day Extra With Exisiting Assets?

Small business tracks savings with cheap high tech
http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050922.wxtracks0922/BNStory/Technology/

Make an extra $500 a day?  Sure, sounds good, doesn’t it?  However, you’d be surprised how many small business owners can’t see the forest for the trees.

Here’s a nice article about a small, family-owned business who were able to do simple math.  Instead of sending trucks and drivers out to visually see if the bins they needed to haul were full … and letting the trucks drift elsewhere if it wasn’t time for a pickup yet _at_$75_per_hours_!, they invested in low cost technology that costs about a dollar a day per truck.

No matter what the size of the business, saving $75 a day (or more) for a dollar a day is a no brainer, but sadly many business men think that the object of their business is only to spend nothing.  Clue:  you can save 100% of your business cost by just going out of business, but I don’t think that’s the most desirable way to proceed.

Wise investments can really pay off in real dollar terms, not to mention the fact that this form is now a recognizable leader in their field … that’s certainly worth something in intangible bucks.

The trucking industry is really challenged by fuel prices, environmental rules, hours of service regulations and a host of other challenges.  The way to cope is to figure out ways to improve the bottom line within the scope of existing problems.. you can’t make $1 a gallon fuel come back no matter how hard you wish.

Move cautiously, demand proof, compare systems and service, but do _something_ … and for the trucking industry that _something_ is tracking your assets … no one who ever made a well-researched decision has lost money yet and the future just seems to be wide open for expanding profits as well.

It’s often been said that one makes their own luck … work on improving yours today.

Businesses in the Fuel Price Crunch

Businesses in the Fuel Price Crunch
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/business/local/sfl-ybpower19sep19,0,7930131.story?page=1&coll=sfla-business-headlines

An interesting article this morning. In the aftermath of Katrina it seems the media, large and small markets; are spending their time reporting Chertnof's and Nagin's posturings or Bush's latest flyover ... if Rita hits the US, Bush has his staff on full alert so he can fly over and look for rich Republican's mansions to rebuild at least one day earlier than his dismal (except for Trent Lott) showing after Katrina.

Anyway, back to business. The thread that interweaves through the whole news article on small Florida businesses being slammed by gas prices is intelligent use of technology. from making sure take home trucks just go back and forth to home to optimizing routing (hate to tell you this but US Zip codes are not arranged in any intelligent geographic order, they are arranged to minimize the distance from post office to mail customer ... unless your business is to deliver envelopes 6 days a week to everyone along certain streets, optimizing routes via zip codes is like guessing if Rita is going to keep on through the Straits of Florida as the map shows, or if she might veer off and perhaps give Chertnof and the TSA Jackboots another chance to see how badly they can screw up again this season.

The lest important way I see technology saving these small businesses is in direct savings resulting from monitoring speeding and cowboy driving. Many business owners want to keep their head in the sand, but it happens, every day, and it happens big time.

Buy GPS tracking from me, buy it from one of my competitors, but do _something_ aside from wringing your hands over fuel prices. They aren't going down.

How things change in a mere 20 years .. Blasts from the past

Here's a link I couldn't resist:
http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000430055334
Scroll down and look at the TI-4100 GPS receiver. Believe it or not, I was using ones like this in 1985, even though the GPS had only one or two birds in continual operation. My job included keeping a highly classified "Doomsday" radio system on line. Because the receivers had to be autonomous in case of a nation-wide disaster, they had to keep time to very precise standards. If the time got off, the only way to reset it was to carry the radio to one of the master stations to re-synchronize it .. or have a special timing timing technician fly to your location with an atomic clock on the seat beside him .. wow, what the TSA have to say about that LoL. The only way, that is unless you had the magic of GPS. In seconds after the satellite came over, the receiver was synced up and on-line.

So even 20 years ago, GPS was saving time and money for government and civilian agencies. truly a wonder of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Enjoy the rest of the Engadget page above, see what Nokia cell phones used to look like. My current Nokia weighs 11 grams, the 1985 model weighed 11 pounds.

Hub school buses get Safer and Cheaper using GPS

Hub school buses to roll despite drivers' GPS gripeBy Kevin RothsteinTuesday, September 6, 2005 - Updated: 09:38 AM EST
http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=101177

Well, school’s back in and here’s some more of the usual misguided griping.  The school district is charged with the safety of the students and with the efficient transportation of the kids.  The drivers get paid to drive, but instead have been found parked and napping; driving their busses on personal shopping trips and various other acts of unprofessionalism

Does the driver’s union work to make their ranks professional? Oh heck no, they threaten to time up the start of school, fighting to keep management from controlling the drivers and busses that they pay for.

Kudos to the school district management for living up to the responsibility of their positions and refusing to let the tail wag the dog.  Boston’s children _and_ Boston’s bus drivers will be safer.

In fairness to the union, they did strike a bargain at the last minute to allow the program to move on with a delay, to be negotiated, in implementing the use of the GPS system to punish drivers for misconduct.  This is the implementation plan my company always proposes.  There is no need to start out using the GPS as a punishment tool.  The very fact that the fleet is being observed causes the majority of drivers who might not be puling their weight to “self correct”.

The one point not brought out in the article is how much of a tool the GPS can be for proving driver’s good work.  No unfounded claims about the bus driver being early and standing little Johnny.  No lies about the bus speeding through a residential area.  Proof of how much the driver did or didn’t idle the engine in restricted areas near schools… the list goes on.  A professional driver who cares about doing a good job should never fear GPS.  And management, trying to figure out how to stretch a $2 a gallon fuel budget to accommodate $3 dollars and up should, frankly, fear _not_ having a management system.

Handhelds and a Data Base Provide Hidden Value

Sixth formers are to use global positioning systems to show tourists historic sites in a Denbighsire town


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/north_east/4215518.stm

Interesting use of handheld GPS. Not just because it points out a valuable method to popularize and improve history study, but if you read closely, you’ll see that these students have developed an extremely valuable tool for public safety.

How many times have you heard of the expensive and sometimes even tragic cases of law enforcement bursting into the wrong house while serving a warrant and/or trying to make an arrest?

Why wouldn’t every cop be equipped with one of these tools, he or she would know whose house it was and also any legitimate, public record of criminality within.

Almost every fire engine rolls from its station on a call with a “run book” … a list of commercial properties, floor plans, dangerous items, handicapped individuals, etc. How many lives could we save each year if we put the database of public tax records and building plans (always submitted to obtain a building permit) into a simple handeld for fire responders? Our problem is not the technology, or even the costs of digitizing and distributing it. Our problem is our unwillingness to change.

Can you imagine the responders in New Orleans, moving house to house looking for bodies, if they knew instantly in front of whose house they stood and who was supposed to live there? Mind boggling … so what seems to be the hold up … this isn’t rocket science, it’s kid stuff.. well excuse me, not ‘kids’ per se, but college students whose area of expertise is not technical.

The Value of Human Life - Why We Should Track Busses

Cause of fatal bus crash unknown
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200509/s1453799.htm

Just wandering through some other news items when I came upon this sad story.  Time and time again I have noticed the contrast between the information available to investigators in air crashes versus bus disasters.

One can immediately jump to the conclusion, ‘oh but aircraft are so much more expensive, it’s not costs effective to equip busses with recorders like aircraft.”

Well, it sounds a good argument at first, but the problem is that it’s false.  Last time I checked into it, a tourist dead in a bus is just as dead as one in and airplane, and the value of either person is incalculable in human terms … and in liability terms, perhaps hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars.

Simple fleet management recorders that would pay for themselves in business savings could and should be on every bus .. commercial, shuttle, school, etc.  Not only would the operators save money, when a tragedy like this occurred, they could find out in seconds if the driver had been violating the law.  

What a blessing to those who are charged with keeping roads safer, and, if the driver was faultless, what a relief to him or her .. imagine what it must feel like to be in charge of a fatal accident and be living with the blame and unable to prove what precautions you took?

Margueite Saves the Vacation

In amongst all the bad news from Katrina, oil prices, the war in Iraq and especially, all the bad, bad things that are sure to come from the ubiquitous use of GPS, I thought this column was cute:
http://www.startribune.com/stories/1513/5593694.html

Ordinary folk on a nice vacation, made better, faster, cheaper and less contentious by a little assistant called Marguerite.  I wonder how many gallons of expensive gas would be saved this Labor Day weekend if everyone had Marguerite along offering her guidance.

It's nice to have money, but better shopping would pay

Orbital Awarded $3.5 Million Contract for Vehicle Tracking and Dispatch System by Culver City, California

http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20050902005260&newsLang=en

I don't normally comment on the competition, but this press release caught my eye. It's well known that some businesses and government agencies are still avoiding the advantages of GPS tracking due to cost. It's also becoming well known that costs have come down significantly in recent years.

But not for Culver City! Either there's a significant math error in the article, or the city is paying $66000 per bus! for a "smart" transportation management system. This is way out of line for any rational system. Orbital Sciences, the successful vendor, is heavily established in building and launching satellites. At this price, perhaps they are building and launching private satellites just for Culver City?

If you manage busses or are concerned about how bus systems operate and want to see things improved, give me or any other reputable independent consultant/dealer a call. Do your own research. A really nice tracking and fleet management system for transit busses should cost a lot closer to $600 per vehicle (a small bit more, perhaps), but $66000!?! God bless the American free enterprise system, but give me a freakin' break, would you?

Geoslaves and Yellow Journalism

A long post today, I saw this article released on a press release network and couldn't resist making some corrections and comments. It's sad that a country based on technology has a press corps so berift of understanding of it.. Mu comments in Italics
-------------
Experts fear brave new world of 'geoslaves'
By LANCE GAY Scripps Howard News ServiceSeptember 01, 2005
- To injured mountaineers and lost backpackers, nifty technology using global information systems holds the promise of being a lifesaver.
And America's legal system has found the technology provides ways to punish drunken drivers or nonviolent offenders like Martha Stewart, who are sentenced to home confinement with an ankle bracelet monitoring their whereabouts rather than time in a prison cell costing taxpayers $60,000 a year to operate.

à This is interesting, since I have long been a voice in the wilderness asking how we would pay for tracking all the people we want to track. However $5000 a month seems extraordinary.. do you have a source for this figure?

But academics and lawyers warn there's a real danger to privacy as the technology becomes cheaper and easier to obtain. Developed for military use in the 1970s, global positioning system (GPS) technology is today a $5 billion industry that has gained widespread use in American society without much debate about whether its uses should be limited.
"Human tracking has gone mainstream," said Jerome Dobson, a geography professor at the University of Kansas and past president of the American Geographic Society. He says tracking systems are eroding America's cherished independence and threaten to transform workers into "geoslaves."
"The question I like to use to bring this home is to ask: 'How long would Anne Frank's diary be if she were wearing one of these nifty devices?' " he said.

à A nice quote if the only agreement is that use of tracking is by entities who wish to do harm. I mean, if Eve hasn’t eaten the apple we’d all be still living in Paradise, would we not?

GPS technology used to be an expensive niche product because of the costs of maintaining relay stations that transferred signals from satellites to receivers. But thanks to widespread use of cellular-phone service, the price for a system has dropped to as little as $200.
GPS equipment is an option offered on many new car models today, so drivers can find their way to strange locations. But what many owners don't know is that the equipment can also easily be used to find the driver, and rental-car operators have used their systems to track where customers took their cars.

à An alarmist paragraph that is only partially correct. You are mixing capabilities of different systems. Typical GPS navigation systems that show the vehicle on a map for the driver’s benefit have _no_ ability to transmit location to anyone. Systems such as GM’s OnStar™ do allow the monitoring agency to ‘see’ the vehicle, but this is an option that must be paid for in advance by the owner…hardly a clandestine monitoring system. With respect to rental car companies monitoring vehicle use, they are required to inform users in advance … several court cases have enforced this rather emphatically. Basic property rights come into play here, in opposition at times to expectation of privacy. If you own a car, and you rent it to me, and I abuse the terms of the contract, have you no right to know? If I rented the car and you followed me in another car and observed me, would you be guilty of breaking some law … I doubt it, it’s a free country (or it was before the American Patriot Act). The germ of truth in your paragraph is caveat emptor.

Use a cell phone, and someone can locate where you're talking, thanks to a 1999 federal law that directed cell-phone companies to include GPS identifiers in their machines. Several companies sell tracking devices that can go in a child's backpack or shoe.

à The Enhanced 911 rule you mention does not include any such GPS requirement such as you assert. See the rule here:
http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Wireless/News_Releases/1999/nrwl9016.html
What the rules _do_ require is that carriers be able to locate 911 calls to certain tolerances. Although the FCC has since delayed enforcing these rules, many carriers can and do comply today. However, they comply almost universally by using a technique called cell tower triangulation. The reason this technique is used rather than GPS location is that it works with all cellular phones, not just the miniscule number of GPS phones currently deployed. Again, everyone is entitled to their views regarding commercial companies or the authorities being able to know the approximate locations of every call made, but GPS is not the issue and were the GPS system turned off tomorrow the location ability would not be significantly affected.

In hopes of controlling traffic on the jammed and gridlocked highways, and avoiding collisions, the U.S. Department of Transportation is working on "intelligent design" highways that will link traffic control to wireless-controlled systems to be installed in cars by the next decade. But the same systems could easily measure your speed, and mail you a speeding ticket if you violate the law.
Dobson concedes that Americans are adopting these systems because the technology provides an advantage, and he stresses he's not opposed to the equipment. But he said Americans need to debate what limits to place on global positioning systems and develop safeguards for dangers to freedom they pose.
Those same difficult-to-remove tracking systems strapped on the wrists of Alzheimer's victims to locate those who wander away also can be used to track and control you, he notes. After the horrific Elizabeth Smart and Shasta Groene kidnappings, some parents looked to fitting their kids with tracking devices. But the same devices could just as readily be purchased by predators and put to use keeping kidnapped victims imprisoned (by telling the predators the exact whereabouts of the children).

à Come, come now, this is a bit far fetched, isn’t it? The criminal puts a bracelet on the child and orders the victim not to move and then leaves the area. The victim disobeys the captor and the captor than, by some science fiction means simultaneously tracks the child via the internet and pursues and recaptured? Pulp fiction .. a piece of rope would be a much more effective captivity monitor and has no batteries to run down.

Jeremy Gruber, legal director of the National Workrights Institute, says GPS is a powerful technology that permits the sort of electronic monitoring of mobile workers that has become widespread in factories and offices in the last 15 years.
Gruber said employers can now monitor the minute-to-minute whereabouts of salesmen and other on-road employees, even when they are not working.
"The type of personal information they can gather is virtually unlimited," he said, pointing out that employers can determine if their workers are going to the doctor or attending political rallies. There are currently no legal restrictions on what employers can do with the information they collect, and no requirement that employers inform employees that they are being monitored.
"This is an extreme gray area" that hasn't been addressed by the courts or legislatures, he said.

à I certainly agree with the issue that rules regarding collecting and safeguarding data should be more clearly defined. However, what part of employment guarantees such perquisites as visits to the doctor on company time? When an employer pays an employee is there not an expectation of a day’s work for a day’s pay? I’ve installed many vehicle tracking units for commercial and government clients. So far the results are 100%, that’s right; each and every installation has had significant time accounting problems. Employees certifying they left home at one hour, but actually leaving 45 minutes later … boss paid for breakfast. An employee who spent the last hour of every day before returning to the warehouse at the hospital, visiting a sick relative. The employer should pay for these abuses, or the employees are somehow entitled to just steal? A government agency found an employee who took several afternoons a week to stop and play 9 holes of gold before returning to the office. Did the taxpayers have aright to expect a day’s work from this individual or was it a violation of his “privacy”? A bank robber wishes for privacy while making his escape, but is he entitled to it?

Then-Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., pushed legislation requiring companies collecting GPS data to inform customers of their activities, but the measure languished in the Senate Commerce Committee without action.
State and local governments say GPS systems put on public vehicles have increased the effectiveness of operations. After Charlotte, N.C., installed such technology on its ambulance system, the local government reported a 10 percent faster response time because ambulances could be guided around roadblocks and traffic. Many northern states use GPS systems to guide snowplows through snow-obscured streets.
One New Jersey police department secretly installed the system on police cars and fired five policemen who were loitering over meals or in parking lots when they wrote in their logbooks that they were patrolling the streets.

à Exactly replicating my real-world experiences. Were these cop’s rights violated? Or, were they giving their employer .. us tax payers .. bad value for wages received?

The systems are widely used in the trucking industry. Employers used to rely on odometers strapped to the truck's axel to tell them how far the truck traveled. But GPS technology provides much more information, giving companies not only information on the truck's specific location, but the direction it is heading, its speed and information on whether the worker is taking a break or working.

à indeed, taking a break is one of the things drivers and ultimately their employers are responsible for. The safety record of trucking is as good as it is strictly because the Federal Highway Safety Administration and other government agencies require adherence to federal Hours OF Service rules to prevent fatigue-caused accidents and prevent the exploitation of drivers. It seems to me that in this case a good argument might be made that, in addition to being a business profit tool for drivers as well as owners, GPS tracking is a viable safety asset.. let me tell you a true story from a driver friend of mine. Like the majority of long-haul drivers, his income depends directly upon loaded miles driven. Before his company gave him the free profit incentive of a GPS tracking system in his truck, he had to stop several times a day, stand in line for a pay phone, wait for a dispatcher to be free to speak with him and then, perhaps, find out that he had passed up a load an hour or so back .. already given to another driver farther away than he was at the time the load became available. Now that he has GPS tracking and in-cab communication, he drives more legal hours per day and learns of loads ready for pickup the instant they are ready. He can contract for the load with the push of a button. GPS in the cab raised his personal income 25%!. Some kind of geoslave, perhaps, but a happy one.

William Herbert, senior counsel for the Civil Service Employees Union in Albany, N.Y., is troubled that the technology is giving employers too much information.
"This infringes, to some degree, on their autonomy," said Herbert. He also worries the location systems could also be used to track employees heading off to union halls, or engaged in other union activities that employers are prohibited from monitoring under federal labor laws.

à I have a little problem with employee “autonomy”. Are employees hired to do a job and paid a wage for it, or are they responsible to take money and do as they wish? Far be it from me to argue law with an attorney, but the way the comment is attributed to Mr. Herbert may be inaccurate. Employees of a union shop most certainly have the right to visit their union headquarters but there is _no_ Federal law that allows this on company time, or that compels the employer to pay them for that time. I was a union employee for years and one of the reasons I left the union was that a few of my fellow employees who held positions of trust in the union would sign out from work to do “union business” and go to bars or take naps. My employer did not pay them for that time … the union local, via the dues deducted from my paycheck did. Employers have the right to now that their employees are on the job when their employees are being paid. Period.

Herbert told a recent American Bar Association conference that the nation's labor laws need to be updated to deal with the technology, and urged the National Labor Relations Board to issue directions on how the technologies can be used.
Herbert said he's not opposed to using new technologies, but noted that other countries and the European Union recognize the privacy issues surrounding the wider use of GPS and are concerned enough to draft regulations to keep its use contained.
The NRLB has left concerns about the systems to unions to sort out with management. In its new national contract with the trucking industry, the Teamsters this year won agreement that information gathered through "black boxes" installed on trucks cannot be used to punish truckers.

à Indeed this sounds a worthy cause. What about the other side of the coin. Last year a trucker involved in an accident was arrested and spent nearly 6 months in jail before a laboratory extracted the data from the archaic “black box” in the vehicle and proved the charges made by the police were false. Not long ago a client of my company had a driver involved in an accident in which a vehicle pulled out in front of my client’s vehicle and was struck. The police charged my client’s driver with speeding, based on their on-scene investigation. (and, perhaps, because he had the name of a nation-wide corporation on his truck??) In less than a day, my client extracted the information form the on board GPS business system which showed beyond the shadow of a doubt that the police estimate of my client’s speed was at least 20 miles per hour too high. When the prosecutor was shown the GPS records, he called in the police chief and the ticket as voided and no charges were filed. Were these drivers geoslaves?

Monitor your Teen Drivers Part II

Driving with male teens is risky!

Washington August 29, 2005 10:17:21 AM IST

http://news.webindia123.com/news/showdetails.asp?id=111115&cat=World

Here's a great article that seems to confirm some of the empirical 'knowledge' many of us carry around. Male teens are high-risk drivers, and male teens with other male teens in the car are significantly more risky. My daddy had an old saying which has often proved true ... one boy is half a man, two boys a quarter man and three boys is no man at all.

What's a parent to do? One place where technology can help make things better for today's parents than they were for my parents is to give serious thought to requiring your teen driver to be tracked full time by a GPS device.

The issues of privacy, trusts and caring always surface, but the fact is, a parent has the duty and the responsibility to do what they must to bring a child trough to adulthood. Start working with your children at the earliest possible age to teach them about road responsibility. Make sure _you_ always drive as you want your children to drive. And broach the idea early that the privilege of driving will be conditioned upon monitoring.

The most trusted drivers in the country ... long haul truckers who go out on the road for days or weeks at a time, carrying precious or dangerous cargo are almost always under constant monitoring. Trust but verify.

There are many devices and systems you could use, but whatever your decision, use one. There is no greater responsibility, nothing about your job, your children's friends opinions, your feelings about privacy, etc. that is _anywhere_ near as important as your primary parental responsibility.

No one can guarantee that monitoring your child will someday result in them thanking you for caring, but one thing for sure, if they don't live to adulthood, you won't be getting any thanks at all.

Businesses are waking up?

Businesses get frugal with fuel
09:32 AM CDT on Friday, August 26, 2005
By ANGELA SHAH and BRENDAN M. CASE / The Dallas Morning News

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/082605dnbusfuelecon.1ca451d0.html

Interesting article today that covers a lot of ground vis-a-vis constantly rising fuel costs and the toll on businesses everywhere.

An interesting fact that didn't make the article was that the fuel savings vehicle auxiliary power unit from Energy and Engine Technology Corp is not at all unique so far as the power saving technology. There's plethora of on-board APUs out there that claim to, and certainly will save fuel. What's unique about the featured solution however, is that it is being marketed as GPS capable, so that 'savers' can track not only how much they saved, but where they saved it.

It's perhaps an unfortunate quirk in the EPA's Clean Air regulations, but a viable quirk none the less that pollutants spewed out the stack in one area are of much more concern than the same amount of pollutants spewed somewhere else. Companies in special compliance zones who are allowed to emit 'X' amount of pollution, but who can prove they emitted less are allowed to sell, trade or barter the difference.

My little company has been trying to pitch this idea for several years now, with limited success. Municipalities and business know that the 'where' of pollution, fuel wastage, dangerous driving, etc. can be determined, but they just haven't correlated it with the fact that location can be very easily and cheaply determined in today's GPS world. A failure of education on my part I guess.

several people in the scientific GPS world have used the phrase, 'The Power of Place'. Perhaps one outcome of this latest fuel debacle will be that this power can migrated into the non-GPS geek world.

What is really Up There?

The GPS Constellation: Now and Future

http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/2005/08/the-gps-constellation-now-and-future/index.php#orison_mc

Those of us in the industry regularly blather on about the 'system' as if it were common knowledge. I came across this referenced article and thought it might be interesting to the more technically minded individuals.

About the only technical flaw in the article is its assertion that there are only 29 satellites currently in orbit. Actually, every single satellite ever launched except one infamous launch failure many years back (described by an old colleague, H. beat Wakernagel as an IOBM (Into Ocean By Mistake)) is still in orbit. As older birds become inoperative they are boosted into a slightly high 'parking orbit' where they will be for at least several thousand more years.

In the world press that glories on the occasional 'big news' military debacle, such as thew infamous $600 C-5 toilet seats of years gone by, the Navstar/GPS is a sensationalists nightmare. A program that has virtually never missed a deadline, has never had a significant system failure and that not only has met and exceeded every military goal but now provides the backbone for ever-increasing civilian uses, there is little 'bad' to write.

That's why you will very seldom find an article like this in the mainstream press. No scandal, no villains, just a lot of dedicated folks operating hardware that meets specifications and continues to do its work, fay after day.

There's a little irony for me in the news about combining the various separate monitoring networks so that the Master Control Station folks at Schriever AFB can do an even better job operating the system. More than 15 years ago I was deeply involved in a program to do exactly that .. however all the various monitor circuits had been paid for by money from different sources, and there is no force more immovable in the US government infrastructure than commercial lease circuit specialists who transfer government money to commercial lease suppliers. After 15 years, hooray, I'm glad it didn't take 30 years.

State Workers Vexed

Some state workers vexed by vehicle policy
August 14, 2005
By Robin Palmer Staff Writer

A policy that has state employees scrambling to find cars to drive while their own vehicles sit idle has many fuming.... (full article here:)

Well here's some happy news for a Monday morning ... the State of Vermont apparently has some management and supervisory personnel who can do simple arithmetic ... and who take their management responsibilities seriously.

The state has made a fleet of "loaner" cars available to state employees and asks them to use state vehicles whenever they need to drive more than 54 miles a day on state business. Seems totally reasonable to me. A number of employees, however, are upset that the state just doesn't let them use their own vehicles to drive all the miles they want, reimbursing them $0.405 a mile for doing so. When state vehicles are all in use, Vermont negotiated a good deal with a local rent-a-car company that gives the state employees vehicles for $31 a day ... reimbursable, of course. Let's analyze for a moment just how well founded the complaints are.

First, they are annoyed that they are asked to book cars 48 hours in advance. Well, I'm not so naive that I don't know trips can't alway be pre-planned. However, I'm also know, having worked under an arrangement with the federal government for years where I could just hop in my car any time, on my own authority, and drive all I felt I needed to and then claim the mileage, that no planning often results in excessive trips. If being a state employee, with attendant benefits and salary, requires a modicum of planning, I say it's good, in the long run, for the employee's productivity and it's certainly good for the state.

Second, many of the complaints revolve around the employee giving up the use of their four wheel drive personal vehicles to "downgrade" themselves to the use of sensible, front wheel drive sedans or vans. I've written about this subject before ... 90% percent of the 4wd vehicles in this country, public or private, are status symbols. Government and commercial fleet managers who actually measure the use of 4wd under real-world conditions find that it is just not used on the vast majority of vehicles ... driving up the cost of the fleet and the cost of fuel, for sure. Employees need to separate out wants from true needs, and it sounds to me as if the leadership in Vermont is doing well at that task.

So, am I anti-employee? heck no, I was an employee, subject to management's dictates for years. But these guys and gals who are complaining out to at least be a little bit better educated as to the good deal they have. The state (in concert with the majority of other government agencies and commercial companies) reimburses 40.5 cents per mile. The true cost of driving a mid-size SUV or pickup in todays world is up to 90 cents per miles according to recent AAA surveys. And, this figure doesn't really take into account the full cost of wear and tear on the vehicle ... anyone can easily imagine the difference in comfort and appearance (and in resale value) of a private car that's say 8 years old with 40,000 miles as opposed to the same vehicle with 80 or 90,000 miles of inadequately reimbursed business miles on it.

It just makes good sense to put all that wear and tar, rock chips, salt accumulation and general degradation back on the state ... and not dive one's own car for 90 cents a mile and get back less than half in reimbursement. Kudos to the leadership of the great state of Vermont ... 49 more that can step up out there ...

Workers Caught Stealing Gas

Jackson City Workers Caught Stealing Gas

August 10, 2005

JACKSON, MS

Jackson police are investigating city workers for the theft of gas, according to WLBT TV. They're not driving off from the pumps, but using taxpayer money to fill gas tanks in their personal vehicles.... (see full article here:)
http://www.fleet-central.com/gf/t_inside.cfm?action=news_pick&storyID=20463

OK, so how does this little tidbit relate to GPS? And why do I care ... or should any business owner or government manager care ... about this relatively minuscule note of petty theft?

Well, because it's far from minuscule to those who know what's really going on in their fleets. Fuel theft and misuse have always been a problem. With fuel prices heading far too close to $3.00 a gallon it's becoming a more and more worthwhile area to devote scarce management resources to. In my commercial work I see more and more evidence of this practice going on, varying only in method and magnitude. The one common constant seems to be that management seldom knows about it until a GPS gives notice ... and management can almost never quantify it. once again, you can't manage what you can't measure.

Fuel irregularities seem to follow two broad patterns. Either employees illicitly fuel their own vehicles at their employer's fueling points or they fuel employer's vehicles and transfer fuel to their own vehicles, using the company/government vehicle as an improvised tanker .. an even grater waste of resources.

A fleet-wide GPS and proper interpretation of results will nip either practice in the bud ... at virtually no additional cost.

In the case of unsupervised refueling of private vehicles, simply correlating the time and date of fuel dispensed with an authorized vehicle physically being at the pump will flag this problem immediately. One simply designates the fueling point as a known location or zone in the system and pulls a simple report that tells what fleet vehicles were at that point and when ... any fuel deliveries that don't match are certainly worthy of investigation. Might sound like some accounting work involved here, but the minor cost of comparing two spreadsheets (easy to set up something like Excel to do this is easy and cheap) is a lot less expensive and time consuming than to hire guards or security cameras.

If the employees are going through the more labor-intensive process of fueling the employer's vehicle and then siphoning out the fuel, a decent GPS will still show this up at very little cost. One client of mine had 4 pickups doing the same basic work across his territory. One truck caught his attention via his monthly fuel bill, because it seemed to burn two or three times the fuel of any of the other three. Rather than send the wasteful truck in for maintenance, the client simply pulled a report for visits to the authorized fueling points. When asked to explain why some days the employee had consumed as many as three tankfuls, and had made frequent stops at his home, the employee resigned, citing the invasive violations of his privacy and that truck immediately returned to normal performance with anewly hired replaement driver.

It's up to you, as a manager. Does your employee's privacy extend to a license to steal, or are you willing to earn the extra money you're paid to be a supervisor/manager?

Do We need More Hunters?:"

Although I've never been a hunter I come from a state which makes a big deal out of hunting and I support hunters and properly managed wildlife management programs. However, one form of hunting I think out to be avidly supported, nation-wide, with a year-round open season is wasters like these government ner-do-wells in California.

Hunting for state vehicles
By David M. Drucker Sacramento Bureau
SACRAMENTO -- California's fleet of state-owned vehicles swelled to 70,000 last year, but officials in an aggressive new asset-management push have so far been able to pinpoint only about 40,000....
(full article here)
http://www2.dailynews.com/news/ci_2922404

How would you like to be responsible for buying, and then losing track of 30,000 vehicles? Shocked? Appalled? Mystified? Unsure of your own abilities? Embarrassed by your betrayal of the public who had placed their trust in you?

Well, apparently, if you are like a large number of alleged government managers in California, you'd just say "hoo hum" and go play golf or something. Sad, indeed.

No one denies California is a huge state. Not long ago I believe I saw an article that said CA was the world's sixth largest economy on it's own, or some such awe-inspiring statistic. But really, folks, can anyone even begin to justify losing 30 thousand or more vehicles? But even knowing where they bought the vehicles? Not knowing who's using them? This is a situation which just spins my blood pressure right off the scale.

And California is not unique! A few months ago Minnesota admitted they couldn't account for over 7,000 vehicles. two months ago Colorado found that the state agency that was supposed to manage vehicles not only wasn't managing them but was allowing other agencies to just buy as they wanted. Using an expensive computer system that the legislature bought them to track expenses resulted in "management data" that showed the state was paying from $0 to $300+ per oil change ... that's pinning it down, isn't it? *sigh* Mississippi is out of control too, one State Senator (Biily Thames) is fighting an uphill battle to find out why Mississippi's count of state employees has dropped measurably since the year 2000, yet the size of the government fleet has increased at least 800 vehicles ... about 10%.

Where are these cars and trucks? And what are they doing for the governments who own them? It isn't the total numbers that give one pause, it's the fact that in state after state, no one knows. Is your state any better off? What about your county and your city? These are questions that really beg an answer.

As regular readers know, I deal in technology that can help manage vehicle fleets. But, sad to say, unless someone is willing to jump in and live up to their responsibilities, my technology and my competitor's as well are virtually useless.

You can't manage what you don't acknowledge you need to manage ... that's the first step.

The Problem Is Not The Technology, It's Taking Responsibility

Mobile Asset Tracking Not a Homogenous(sic) Market, Finds ABI Research

..."There are two key differences between container tracking and trailer tracking: containers are typically used in international trade, while trailers are usually domestically transported. Containers are therefore subject to greater governmental regulation, and, quite frankly, the US government and other nations have been dragging their feet in this area," adds Schrier. "Second, the custody chain in containers is much more fragmented than with trailers, and no party wants to bear the burden of the increased cost." ...

Read Article Here: http://tinyurl.com/ckwao

Mobile Asset Tracking, well what the heck is that? Probably more meanings than even I could blog about, but one of the important ones is tracking trailers and shipping containers.

There are significant reasons to do this, both in the realm of business and security ... which, not surprisingly, overlap.

For years US and overseas transportation companies have spent large sums to track the prime movers ... truck tractors and ships, primarily. The costs of this effort are almost universally judged to be more than worthwhile. The giants of the tracking industry, Qualcomm, Teletrac, etc. have healthy bottom lines and based on the products they sell and the services they provide probably have every right to those products.

But what's missing? The part that moves the cargo and provides the profit, that's what! For years I have wondered why this business is upside down. By themselves a fleet of truck tractors are a worthless liability. About the only thing you could do with them without trailers is use them as very cramped expensive taxis (not even legal under Federal regulations) or perhaps put a freezer atop the 5th wheel and let the drivers sell ice cream cones.

The only think that earns a trucking company's income is the trailer on the back end. tracking of trailers is, after years, moving forward. There are technical challenges that differ from the tracking of the trucks themselves, but there are several technologies out that that work well. benefits include efficiency in movement (equaling profit), reduction of number of assets required and reduction in theft and "shrinkage" with some solutions.

So when will someone decide that containers are worth the same sort of visibility and control? The largest component of the problem does not seem to be cost ... containers are an asset valuable enough to track (in many cases at the beginning and end of overseas shipments the containers are indeed the "trailers' themselves. An additional big payoff benefit would seem to be security. Through initiatives such as operation safe cargo and other programs, the TSA and allied government agencies have made it even more cost effective to track containers than domestic trailers.

What do I perceive as the holdup then? The old failure to accept responsibility problem. Ajax Trucking knows they own their trucks and trailers and they're all here in the US, so they know what makes sense for them to track. XYZ International Containers, however, has their assets scattered all over the world, and, in fact, may well not be a US company. Their business need to accept responsibility for each of their containers within the US is clearly ill-defined.

From a security standpoint, though, their need is even more well-defined. The possibility that Ajax trucking will pick up a dirty bomb or team of terrorists outside the US and ease them across our borders is pretty remote, but the possibility that one of XYZ's containers will perform this same mission, intentionally, is significantly more real.

In most cases I am a pretty pragmatic, capitalistic guy. I'm against big government in general terms and specifically against big government projects when the private sector could perform them better. But in this case I think the need for government leadership is very clear.

The TSA has had money to help fund these initiatives for several years now. In many cases they haven't even been able to spend the money. Sad. What we need is a senator who cares as much about national security as Hillary Clinton cares about the possibility of silly sex cartoons in a video game to just get the legislation rolling to make container tracking a requirement. Once someone decides that the responsibility must be accepted, the solutions will move from demonstration mode to reality and not only will the US be safer, but the business entities who are 'forced' to comply will benefit in a dozen hidden ways from the better business controls that ensue.

Seems relatively win-win to me, are there any leaders in the US?

School System Joins the Smart club

All buses equipped with tracking devicesSatellite system eases concerns of parents
By Lois K. Solomon Education Writer
Posted July 31 2005

A new satellite system will help answer a question frequently asked by parents: Why isn't my child home yet?All 600 of the Palm Beach County School District's everyday buses were equipped this summer with global positioning systems that can track where a bus is at any moment and pinpoint where it stopped earlier in the day. Only 200 buses carried the computers last year....
In Palm Beach County, some bus drivers have been grumbling, too, driver Ethleen B. Page said. But Page, whose bus had GPS last year, said the system makes her feel more secure. "What if I got in an accident or something happened and I couldn't talk," she said. "They're paying me. I have nothing to hide."..

Full article here:
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/education/sfl-pbts05busingjul31,0,5874469.story?coll=sfla-news-education

Well, here's some good news for the day. Again, one of the minorities of school districts led by folks who have decided to give the tax payer value for the money and government benefits they receive.

How much did it cost? About $500K according to the article. A lot of money? yes, but, used properly they can easily recover that money in as little as a year ... all the while enhancing their primary duty of protecting the students in their care.

Dave, how will they save money you might ask? Good question. Here's several proven ways:

Driver hours. No more wondering, falsified, or just plain errored time sheets. No more manual transcribing and consequent arithmetical and penmanship errors. Dozens of man hours per week saved there, alone.

Route compliance: They will know that the drivers are running their routes in the most efficient way ... many school districts face the problem that drivers often decide to do things 'their' way and the divergence from plans cost money.

Speeding: The speed and location will be monitored. This saves real-world dollars as well as enhancing safety. The only comparable method in today's world is to send out supervisors to do spot checks or to ride along. Wasted gas, wasted supervisory man hours and no where near 100% coverage.

Idle Reduction: This is an oft-overlooked "biggie". Drivers without adequate supervision sometimes start their busses at the bus yard and go back for that last cup of coffee. Idling at schools is not only wasteful but is now against federal regulations. A district of this size, if unlucky, could get assessed Federal penalties equal to a large fraction of the cost of the whole system in a year. In addition, the idling regs a schools we put in place for a very good reason ... idling bus exhaust drawn into schools ventilating systems is a primary cancer causing pollutant. Makes no sense at all to try to keep children off cigarettes and then gas them in their seats.

As a sideline, it appears that parents will be able to access the system on their own to check on student's homeward progress. An often overlooked cost recovery method is to assess those parents who want to use the system a nominal charge .. totally optional, pay and use or don't pay and don't use.

There are many more ways to save with GPS and I applaud Palm Beach County for taking initiative and being wise stewards of the funds they are entrusted with.

DISCLAIMER: As regular readers know, I sell and consult on this technology for a living. I have no connection with this effort by Palm beach, in fact it appears they are using one of my competitor's products, but that by no means diminishes their efforts. I'm happy to discuss this and other forward-thinking efforts any time.

Lifetime GPS Tracking

Tracking sex offenders forever

SOME STATES REQUIRE LIFETIME GPS MONITORING AFTER PRISON TERMS END

By David A. LiebASSOCIATED PRESS
Technology that helps the military align targets and motorists find their way is being tapped to track some sex offenders forever....

read the rest of the article here:

http://tinyurl.com/d6a32

Pretty interesting stuff .. this article is in at least 115 newspapers this morning. Some interesting issues and conundrums here for sure.

As a provider of this kind of technology my first thought is, Wow, yes, bring it on! The actual equipment to track offenders is relatively cheap today and given the huge increase in volume that this kind of law would force it would get even cheaper. And I could still get rich *smile*

As a parent and a supporter of laws for the protection of children I applaud the idea because we certainly aren't doing the kind of job we should be to prevent recidivism in this area. All too sadly, when a sex crime occurs, the police dig out the list of the "usual Suspects" -- past offenders, and the perpetrator almost always pops up.

However, the good side has some very challenging downsides.

First and foremost, even someone who was convicted of a dastardly crime might have the right to some degree of privacy after he or she has served their sentence ... or at least an argument can be made for that right under our constitution. Remember, for every disgusting child rapist there are thousands of 'sex offenders' whose primary crime was giving in to their basic nature without checking some girl's birth certificate .. or a middle age teacher (in today's world, male or female), acting out a mid-life fantasy with an all too willing student. A crime? yes, certainly under today's laws, but is it a crime that requires a life sentence? And, if so, why didn't the court impose a life sentence to begin with? I'm posing questions here, I certainly don't have the answers.

What I do have some answers for is the second big question ... who is going to track these individuals and who is going to pay? The knee-jerk decisions by state governments to impose these regulations is at least a very double-edged sword. The police and probation authorities are typically pretty well loaded with work today and very seldom 'fat' in the budget department. The real sentences imposed here may be upon law enforcement and tax payers.

Let's say state 'X' passes a law that says all sex offenders must be tracked. Let's further postulate that the sate has 1000 individuals in the tracking "inventory", and that the money to equip those thousand ner-do-wells with bracelets or some kind of tracking "box" is available. No problem, line them up, clip on the device, and Bob's your uncle, right?

Well the logistics of rounding up a thousand people are non-trivial, but again, by magic, the state agency responsible gets it done.

Now, how often do you want these individuals reported upon? Daily? Well, maybe that's not quite frequently enough .. the perpetrator can do a lot of damage in 24 hours and then be back in his house like a good little boy or girl easily before the next report. OK, better go to hourly, that'll fox the bastards, won't it? Hmm, an hour? what rape or perversion takes an hour? The guy still has time to visit the school yard, do his dirty thing and then be home before his actions are know. OK, minute by minute, that's the ticket, that'll do it, there, Dave, that's your answer.

Got it boss. Now, consider this: To report minute by minute on an object of interest ... person or vehicle ... we're talking a minimum of $20 a month at the most current cell phone data rates. In practicality, more like $30 or $40 bucks. I'm sure most states have a spare $360,000 floating around in the state budget for telecom costs ... doesn't your state? (and remember I'm talking the cell phone network here, perhaps a good choice in some states, but suppose we do that here in Colorado .. do you know how many places have _no_ cell data coverage at all in the western states? Massive holes in coverage. OK then, can't these devices report back via satellite? Sure, however the cost of the units per "trackee" just doubled or tripled and the cost for the bandwidth just went up by a factor of perhaps three ... we're up to maybe a million five to track our dastardly doers.

Lastly, to keep a much longer story a bit shorter), let's say we solve those costs and the data is flowing. The data is flowing where? What state or county agency has an on-line control room set up to monitor individuals roving about the state or even all 50 sates? Hmm, gotta build a sex offender monitor control center .. think Martin Marietta wants to bid on that? Based on my real-world experience a center to monitor even a few hundred offenders is going to cost several hundred thousand dollars ... floor space, consoles, servers and communications control computers, on and on.

By magic you have that monitor station in place, now tell me who is going to man it? one of my projects for the USAF monitors about 400 vehicles on a 24 hour basis. The monitor folks do nothing but keep the system alive and respond to calls for assistance from the vehicles. They don't monitor specific acts performed, they don't know where school yards and municipal swimming pools and other likely offender trolling grounds are ... and it takes 3 or 4 people per shift, 3 shifts a day, 365 days a year. For a thousand sex offenders? Oh let's say 5 or 6 per shift, I'm sure we can slave drive these folks harder than the military does their troops, right?

Patient readers, that is an enterprise that'll cost something like another million or so in salary and benefits .. minimum.

Is GPS tracking of offenders a good thing? Could be, I don't really know, but I think if you look at what the government world refers to as the "Logistics tail" you can surely see it's not a decision to take lightly.

Are all the brains in Canada?

Liaison CAN/US Courier Deploys RFID Infrastructure across Fleet
By Editorial Staff Freight forwarder taps Ship2Save for radio frequency identification-enabled solution to boost productivity, provide value-add for customers Montreal — July 29, 2005 — International freight forwarder Liaison Can/Us Courier has deployed a radio frequency identification (RFID)-enabled infrastructure across its fleet of trucks in an initiative that will allow the company to provide RFID-powered transportation services throughout North America... read full article here:
http://www.sdcexec.com/article_arch.asp?article_id=7456

Originally, US companies like UPS and FedEX had the lead in gangbuster ideas such as this. Every package is bar coded and drivers and warehouse personnel (when they do their job properly) track shipments by scanning them.

However, given the technology advances these outfits have been sitting on their laurels for at least a couple years too many.

I sell GPS tracking technology for a living, over the years I have consulted extensively in that area, bought millions of dollars of equipment for clients and evaluated thousands of pieces of hardware and systems.

US commercial carriers are by and large just in the hand-wringing, 'we can't afford it' mode. It's very hard to show, even with hard performance data, that investments in modern technology can pay off quickly.

Using RFID rather than the more labor intensive hand bar code scanning can save dollars and increase throughput .. both leading directly to improved bottom lines. Wal*Mart created a huge burble in the logistics airflow more than a year ago when they demanded RFID coding from suppliers. The carriers, who in many cases earn part of their profit by hauling for Wal*Mart have steadfastly ignored this cold-plated opportunity.

All the lines of equipment I sell and service come from Canada. Intelligent, cost effective ideas like the headline above come from Canada. US executives, by and large, sort of laugh up their sleeves at Canada. Perhaps they ought to open their eyes and take a realistic look at the rest of North America. They may be laughing out of the wrong side of their mouths.