According to Gordon Walsh, President of Tracker's strategic wireless technology partner Future Quest Wireless Inc., there are a number of relatively recent developments that are responsible. "Perhaps first and foremost", comments Mr. Walsh, "the advent of national public data-capable wireless networks is a very recent development, occurring only within the last couple of years in earnest. There are now 3 global cellular standards in use, all of which include high-speed packet data capability. Essentially, this means that virtually regardless of where your business is located in North America, low-cost always-on, always-connected wireless data plans are available from all of the cellular companies. These low cost data plans allow a vehicle equipped with a GPS receiver to transmit the vehicle's location reliably to a mapping system where the vehicle movements can be viewed."

"Secondly", he explains, "GPS technology itself has advanced to the point where both the physical size and costs of GPS receivers have dropped substantially, while performance has increased. An entire 12 channel, high performance GPS receiver is now available in an electronic chipset. "As a result", he explains, we are able to provide highly affordable GPS tracking in a variety of configurations, to suit most any towing company budget."

"It's not just the technology that is causing the towing industry to adopt GPS and other wireless technologies", contends Tracker Management Systems President & CEO, Jim Weaver Sr. "In the past few years, the towing industry itself has become fiercely competitive, with service standards rising along with fuel and operating costs, while at the same time declining service prices are pressuring tow company margins and profitability. Prudent owners realize that the best avenue to a healthy bottom line is maximizing the productivity of those expensive rolling assets." Explaining further,  Jim comments, "We've always maintained the philosophy at Tracker that our job is to help towers get more with less. As with our Tracker Enterprise software solutions, these GPS systems do just exactly that."

Many Tracker clients with GPS solutions seem to agree.

"Since we equipped our vehicles with GPS units and added dual computer displays for our dispatchers", states Daryl Raab of Daryl's Towing of Mesa, Arizona, "we feel like we are in a completely different world. It's basically like taking a blindfold off", he explains. "Now, we've got our Tracker system on the right monitor, with our mapping system on the left monitor and they go hand in hand. We use the information on the left, which is basically our window on what's really happening out there, to make decisions on what do do on the right. The GPS system helps us make more effective decisions on the Tracker system, pure and simple.' Daryl's Towing specializes in both local high quality towing, as well as transporting rare and exotic automobiles across the country. "Getting the system wasn't as painful as one might expect", says Daryl. "We started with purchasing 3 or 4 units initially, and then added another one each month to the point where our whole fleet is equipped. The system has made a tremendous difference to our dispatching efficiency, allowing us to handle an extra 4 or 5 calls per week per truck. Now, we're ready for the next step, which will be the addition on PDA computers to each truck for dispatching."

Santa Fe Towing President, Jon Kupchin, operates 35 trucks out of Kansas City, Kansas. "We worked closely with Tracker and Future Quest to develop a complete solution that would ultimately allow our drivers to print tickets, capture the customers signature and accept their credit cards right from the trucks." Expanding on his vision, Jon states "To us, the key is to get as much productivity from our drivers as we can. We have a good group of guys, so it's not a reflection on them, but more on giving them the tools to do their jobs as efficiently as they can. A lot of that responsibility falls back on how well we operate back at the office. If our guys are having to wait to get in touch with a dispatcher, backtrack because of ineffective dispatching or hunt for a jobsite, then no one wins." Jon adds, "Our Tracker software system has the intelligence to automatically price every ticket, according to the rates assigned to each account and the work that is accomplished for each customer. Why not extend that intelligence to the truck, so that the drivers don't have to be concerned with calculating rates and hand-printing tickets?"

Santa Fe started by equipping their vehicles with Future Quest's GPSLink units, that work with a mapping system installed on the same server as their Tracker Enterprise system. This spring, they will add the ability to dispatch to low-cost HP iPAQ color handheld computers which will be mounted in the vehicle with a printer and connected to the GPSLink units. The benefit of this approach is that only a single data plan is required. "What we really appreciated about the Tracker / Future Quest system", says Jon, "is that they gave us a migration path. We started with GPS tracking, which has been a huge help to our dispatchers, but we will end up with much more, always building on what we've already invested in."

Ranger Towing, of Clarksville, Indiana, equipped 8 trucks with the same system as both Santa Fe and Daryl's Towing. States owner Cristina Mullens, "It's all about customer service. Ultimately, our business, our income and our livelihood depend on the level of service we provide to our customers. The GPS system has been a tremendous asset in that regard. Whether we are dispatching more efficiently to the closest truck, helping a lost driver find his way or giving more accurate ETA information to a client; in the end it comes down to providing the best customer service we can." Adds Cristina, "Both Jim Weaver of Tracker and Gord Walsh, of Future Quest have treated us very well. We've had some on-going problems due to our satellite based internet service provider, but they've both stood behind us, putting in a lot of extra time and effort to help us. The system is working great."

Pete Bernegue, owner of Pete's A Towing in Chicago has been using the system to help their dispatcher make better decisions on the fly. "The system tells us when PTO is engaged on any of our 8 trucks. We're not as dependent on the drivers to tell us what they are up to and the system has reduced our voice traffic considerably from having to constantly ask drivers where they are or what they are up to. We know exactly what time any vehicle is hooked, what time it is dropped and of course, where each truck is at any particular moment. The system tells us the location of each truck every 1 to 3 minutes, depending on its speed. It also tells us by colored icons whether it is moving slowly, quickly or whether it has been stopped for over 10 or over 30 minutes. This kind of information is invaluable because it effectively puts the dispatcher in charge of what's going on instead of the drivers. The Future Quest people have been great to deal with. We like how Tracker and Future Quest work together to make our Tracker system even better."

The next step for Pete's A Towing is the addition of wireless dispatch. Explains Pete, "We previously had MDT's (Mobile Data Terminals) in all our trucks, connected to our Tracker system, so we could dispatch directly to them. The system was great, as it eliminated almost all of our voice traffic and gave us complete knowledge of what was happening out there as it actually happened. Unfortunately, the MDT' are no longer supported by the MDT vendor, so we had to stop using it. That's why we really like Tracker's PDA concept because it gives us that same capability, but with off the shelf consumer PDA devices that won't become obsolete. In fact, these PDA units are getting cheaper all the time and can be purchased now for under $200.00. Its not like you're stuck with a single product that will work with the system."

ABC Specialty Towing, out of Lee's Summit, Missouri, operates 2 fleets in neighboring cities. "What really set the Future Quest system apart was how it will tie into the Tracker system", comments owner Elwood Rahn. "Future Quest gave us a very good mapping system, the best we've seen. Yet, as good as it is, the Tracker Visual Tow system really excites us because it will tie our Tracker system right into the GPS system, allowing us to monitor both tow jobs and trucks on the map, all color coded according to the job status in Tracker. Tracker and Future Quest worked together so that we wouldn't get locked into the current map system, so that we could switch to Visual Tow when it is available. We also liked the way we could have a mix of GPSLink units with GPS Nextel phones on the same system. We prefer the permanent installed GPSLink units because we can monitor PTO, but for temporary or less important trucks, the Nextel GPS phones are pretty handy and inexpensive."

States Elwood, "The flexibility of the Future Quest system is impressive. We're testing driver routing now, so that the system will tell the driver how to get to where they are going, with turn-by-turn directions. This really doesn't even cost us anything extra -we are buying PDA's for the dispatch system anyway. The GPS black box feeds the truck location information to the PDA every few seconds and it doesn't need to use any airtime on our data plan to do that, so we basically get full driver routing as a bonus."

Tracker Management Systems has a strategic partnership with Future Quest, a company that specializes in the provisioning of GPS tracking systems and wireless dispatching to Tracker customers, with installed systems operating throughout North America. Together, we are working to extend the value proposition of Tracker's Enterprise Towing solution through extensive wireless technology integration