The Benefits of 4G: How to Better Manage Your Fleet
We recently attended the 2019 American Towman Exposition in Atlantic City, NJ, and it was a great way to get a feel for the technology tow truck operators are looking for most.
Throughout the show, operators shared their thoughts with us on which features are most important to them when it comes to the video recording systems they use on their trucks. And what was the one feature that came up more than most?
The ability to connect their devices to 4G data.
But what benefits would you get from pairing your video recording systems with 4G?
Let’s take a look:
GPS Tracking
One of the biggest benefits of utilizing a 4G connection is the ability to do live GPS tracking through the device. Of course, the video recording system you use would need to have the ability to perform GPS tracking, but most systems today come with the option to connect a GPS antenna to the system or already have one built into it.
By connecting your device to 4G, you can use computers, smartphones and tablets back at your office to both see exactly where your fleet vehicles are in real time and also view the historical GPS locations.
For example, if you get a call for a tow, you can use the live GPS to find the operator that is closest to the location and send them out to the scene. This ensures that your customers are getting the quick service they expect from your company. By finding the closest driver to the scene, you can also save on your bottom line as you’re not wasting fuel by having an operator on the other side of town respond to the call.
Live Images
Another benefit of connecting your video recording systems to 4G is the ability to see the live images being captured by your system.
Let’s say you get a phone call from a concerned citizen who said one of your operators is driving erratically and almost sideswiped their car. With the ability to access the live view from the camera through the 4G connection, you could pull up the live view to see that your operator is indeed looking at their phone and putting people at risk by being a distracted driver – and then take the appropriate action with said employee.
Instant Alerts
Piggybacking off the last section, connecting your video recording systems to 4G can also provide the ability to get instant alerts regarding your vehicles.
Some systems have the ability to send alerts for such things as when a collision happens or when a driver is constantly speeding. But with no 4G connection, you wouldn’t be able to get those instant alerts and could be waiting until those vehicles came back to your garage to finally become aware of the issue.
If one of your vehicles was involved in an accident, wouldn’t you want to know as soon as possible?
It’s also important to get those alerts because some systems will send alerts if there are recording issues. If one of your vehicles had a system that stopped recording due to a damaged camera cable, you could be immediately notified of the issue with an alert and work as quickly as possible to remedy the situation.
Without that alert, you wouldn’t know the system wasn’t recording. And if your vehicle gets in an accident, you could be out of luck when you go to pull the video from the incident and find out the system wasn’t recording at the time.
Easy Updates
When you’re operating a business, your time is at a premium. You really don’t have time to pull SD cards from your video recording systems each night or install firmware updates on 20 systems.
If your systems are connected to 4G, you could easily configure your systems to automatically update if any firmware updates are pushed out, or change the system settings on all of your fleet vehicles with the touch of a button.
With no connection to 4G, you could find yourself wasting hours on manually updating each system as the vehicles come in.
Looking for video recording systems that can connect to 4G? Take a look at the 4G dash cameras and video recording systems we have at Pro-Vision that you can integrate with our fleet management solution, PV Dashboard™.