Monday morning, and the site is empty
The site manager rings at seven on Monday. The mini excavator that was on hire is gone. The site was locked on Friday afternoon. Your tracker portal shows the machine left the site at two on Sunday morning and travelled up the motorway. By the time anyone looks, the tracker has gone quiet.
The data was there, in real time. Nobody was watching the portal at two in the morning, and nothing linked the machine's position to the fact that it should have been parked on a site in a village.
Why tracking doesn't prevent loss
Many hire fleets have trackers or manufacturer telematics. The trouble is how the information is used.
- Trackers from several providers and manufacturer portals each have their own screen.
- Geofences, if set, are drawn by hand and not updated when the machine moves to a new hire.
- Alerts go to an email inbox nobody checks at night.
- There is no link to the hire, so nobody knows whether a movement is expected.
- When a theft is reported, gathering the machine's details and history for police and insurers takes hours.
How you respond to a theft, and what your insurer requires, are matters for your own procedures and insurer. The system's job is to make sure a person knows quickly and has the facts.
What late discovery costs
Machines that are never recovered. Insurance claims and excess, and premiums that rise. Customers without a machine on Monday morning, needing a replacement delivered in a hurry. And machines recovered damaged after days in the wrong hands.
There is also the question of the customer's responsibility under your hire terms, which is easier to discuss when the timeline is clear. Knowing exactly when a machine left site, and whether the site was secured, helps everyone involved, including the customer, who is usually as shocked as you are.
Movement alerts linked to hires
- Location and ignition data from your trackers and manufacturer telematics are combined into one feed per machine.
- When a machine is delivered to a hire, a site boundary is set automatically from the delivery address, and removed when it is collected.
- Rules you set decide what counts as suspicious: movement off site without a collection booked, ignition out of hours, movement at night, loss of signal.
- Suspicious events go to a named person on call by text and phone call through Twilio, with a map and the hire details, not just to an inbox.
- The person can check with the customer, mark the event as expected, or escalate. Every step is logged.
- A theft pack is ready immediately: machine details, serial numbers, photos, last known location and movement history, for police and your insurer.
| Event | Expected if | Otherwise |
|---|---|---|
| Leaves site | Collection or transfer booked | Alert on-call person |
| Ignition at night | Customer has agreed night work | Alert |
| Signal lost | Known dead spot | Alert after your set delay |
| Moves within site | Normal | No alert |
After the change
A machine that leaves its site at two in the morning triggers a call to someone who can act, with the location in front of them. Most alerts turn out to be innocent and are closed in a minute. The ones that aren't are acted on while the machine is still moving, and the information police need is ready.
Signs your fleet is exposed
- Tracker data is spread across several portals.
- Geofences are set by hand or not at all.
- Nobody sees alerts outside office hours.
- Thefts are reported by customers, not your systems.
- Pulling machine details for police or insurers takes a long time.