As the title says,

Our trusting company is fitting trackers to all the vans for "safety" purposes (bull****)

Ive heard stories about what they can monitor ie speed, time spent idling etc what else can they be used to monitor?

I'm not one for taking the **** workwise but it just shows a complete lack of trust from the clowns I work for.

Are there anyways of disconnecting them by stalling the engine etc?

Is it hard to locate the unit or are there only a few places they could fit it.

Any help would be appreciated,

Lee DT.

 

Theyre usually easy to find if you know what youre looking for. The weakness of any GPS based system is that its aerial needs a line of sight view of the sky, because GPS signals are so weak.

 

find the box and wrap it in lead

 

Find the antennae and wrap it in tin foil every now and then.....

 

My mate has one fitted to his company van. Not sure if it can measure speeds etc, but it does show when he buggers off home early.
The aerial is usually hidden behind the trim on the windscreen pillars. Unplug it.

 

A comment for the defense;

We have several drivers, most are A1, but I do have one or two that continually take the pish. Going home for lunch for two hours but telling us they're stuck in traffic etc etc. We caught one van outside a cinema for two hours.... unfortunately industry in the UK just can't afford that.

If you are doing your job as you should then there ain't a problem, although I can understand that you would be upset that you are being watched.

Since we told the lads that the vans were being tracked for h&s purposes (ostensibly so we don't have to ring to find out where they are when a customer wants an update on a delivery) the skiving has all but disappeared.

Harsh as it may sound, if I were to find out that a tracker had deliberately been interfered with I would consider it a disciplinary matter and act accordingly.

 

Here's an idea

Why dont peep's just do there job and stop taking the P**S at work!

The missus's company has fitted tracker's to there van's/wagon's etc,and have thus far sacked 12 workers for logging overtime/worktime when there van/wagon has been parked outside there house,in a shopping centre,at the pub etc etc

Good on em i say,there are worker's and shirker's in this country,

Companies need to sort the wheat from the chaf !!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

pay a muppet to drive it round, most courier companies seem to do that anyway!!!

 

We had them fitted at a previous company where i was service manager so had access to the tracker pc. Yes, we were extreamly pissed off when they were fitted but there isn't much you can do.

They work on a normal mobile sim card. The unit tracks and stores all the satellite positional and speed info and every hour or two sends it to the receiver connected to the office pc. Or you can click update position on the pc and it sends a request to sat nav unit which then returns the most recent data. All the data is stored on the pc and you can replay any given time frame and watch a moving map of what the vehicle is doing. They are pretty accurate as I watched a little picture of my car reverse off my drive once after moving it to let the missus out.

The aerials were mostly located under the dash, as high up as you could get them and generally work pretty well.

A few guys got their **** kicked for excessive speeding (I mean well into triple figures) and a few questions about skiving off early but nothing too bad. Depends on your boss. Ours checked up a lot but was generally ok with speeding.

One thing though, because they rely on the mobile network for sending the data back you sometimes can't get info if someone is in a dead spot. We had cars and vans sometimes showing as being parked a few streets away when we knew they were at the other end of the country! So you could maybe remove the sim card........or just pull the power for a bit. Do it too often and questions might be asked though.

 

My van was fitted with one where I used to work. Was a PITA - it was wired to ignition so they could tell if the engine was running. So, say if I had to move the van because It was in the way on a car park. I'd move all but 20ft and get a bolshy phone call saying where TF was I going This happened on a regular basis. Even going for lunch became an **** (I WAS entitled to a lunch hour, afterall). So the only way to get peace was to disable it .....

They are a doddle to disable - follow the aerial wire - which will lead you to the main unit. Then follow the wiring loom from it and you'll find a in-line fuse (or two). Re-route the wiring so the fuses are easily acessed.

When you want to nip off a job to get some lunch, pull the fuse. On the computer at the office you'll remain at the same original position, when in reality your parked outside a pub having some nice pub grub When finsihed, Go back to job, park up and plug fuse back in

Same goes for speeding and when taking "scenic routes".

I must add that our GPS trackers had no battery back-up, so if yours has backup it maybe worth disconnecting the aerial too


I never needed to disable it for speeding though, as my van was an Irish import non-HDI Belingo (no turbo). So the fastest I could muster with roof ladders was 80mph with a strong talewind

 

Ahem to that (we were even pitched that we could check how heavy someone brakes as well, wear n tear / servicing costs increase + later braking potential bad driver).

 

Ours isn't that comprehensive- although, in the days of corporate manslaughter etc, we can't turn a blind eye to speeding if we know its occurring, so a bit of an own-goal on that one unfortunately

 

Thanks for the input guys,

Unfortunately I am working for a cowboy housing association that has recently taken us over via a TUPE transfer.

The tracker is just another idea we are currently having to get used to, others are,

A notification of impending redundancies within a month, six months on our tradesmen are still no wiser as to who and when they will go.

Then we where told our hourly charge out rate was £35 per hour because to run 70 tradesmen they have 29 office staff and managers.

This has led to £100,000 being lost per month.

To address this loss our gaffers decided that we are under performing and couldnt see a problem with us accepting a 40% pay decrease in basic salary and a pooled bonus scheme to make the lost money back up.

This led to all 70 tradesmen putting in for voluntary redundancy, unfortunately they only require about 20 redundancies so they are going to interview us for our current jobs and score us on experience, time off, attitude etc.

I'm going to be going self employed in the new year because of it all.

Sorry for the rant but the whole experience has been pretty ****.

 

This is one post i need 2 keep for future Reffffff's guys


Cheers 2 every for there feedback on this one

 

Is it legal for your company to check your time sheets to your vehicle tracker in any case. I thought you could take your boss to court if he stated your times did not marry up? (obviously means he/she has been checking up)

Then you have to ask yourself if you really want to work for a company that has no trust in you!

 

hi

its legal for them to check you tracker logs agianst your time sheet if your told thats one of the reasons for it being fitted. they can also use it to work out work mileage and personal and charge you for it

also the tax man likes them because he can see what is work and personal mileage.
next thing you know the government will start to use the info from all trackers to charge you for drien mileage you know thats coming


Adrian

 

Check out Rewire Security, they have all sorts of security devices including GPS trackers, Vehicle Alarms and Vehicle CCTV. I believe they are also selling jammers.

Rewire Security

 

almost 10 years later, we are all indebted to you

 

didnt realise the date on the first post.
maybe this will be useful for the next 10 years?

 

Lol yes.