GPS Fleet Tracking for Concrete & Ready-Mix

GPS tracking turns the live map into the ready-mix batch board: every mixer shows its position and status, so the dispatcher picks the truck for the next load from what the trucks are doing now. The radio only tells you what a driver last reported. The map shows three trucks pouring at the bridge deck, one waiting at a site whose pump has not arrived, two washing out and one on its way back empty. Geofences around the plant, each job site and the washout pad move the status forward on their own as each truck works through the cycle, so nobody has to update the board by hand.

High Point GPS connects the tracking to the batching and dispatch software the plant already runs, so the batch ticket and the truck's live position share one record. The customer's foreman sees the next truck's arrival time on a phone or hears it from the dispatcher, and the crew schedules the pour around a truck it can see on the map.

The record of a load starts when the truck leaves the plant geofence with the batch time attached. The map shows the time since batching for every loaded truck, and an alert reaches the dispatcher when a truck has been waiting at a site long enough to put the load at risk. When a load is rejected on site for being past its time, the record shows whether the truck arrived at 22 minutes and waited 70, or left the plant late, and the conversation with the customer starts from that.

Wait time is money on both sides of the ticket. The platform records the arrival at the job-site geofence, the start of discharge from the drum input, and the departure, so the wait-time charge on the invoice is a measured figure the customer can be shown. Cycle-time reports per site and per customer show which jobs consistently hold trucks and which contractors are ready when the mixer arrives.

A loaded mixer has a high centre of gravity, and its rollover risk on a corner or a ramp is a matter of physics. The platform's driver-scoring rules for a ready-mix fleet weight cornering and ramp speed accordingly, so a cornering event that would be minor in a straight truck is scored as what it is in a mixer. Supervisors coach from a specific event on a specific delivery, and the record shows the coaching happened.

AI dash cams add the road-facing view for the incident review and the driver-facing view for distraction on the long haul back to the plant. On job sites, the road-facing camera records the ground guide, the pump and the site conditions, which is the evidence that settles a claim about a damaged curb or a truck that backed into something.

A mixer's engine runs whether the truck is moving or not, because the drum has to turn. Engine hours accumulate at idle at every job site and every washout, and mileage-based maintenance misses most of them. The GPS tracking device reads engine hours, and through the drum input, drum hours. The High Point GPS platform then schedules engine, hydraulic and drum-drive service on the hours the truck actually works. Engine fault codes reach the shop as they are logged, which is how a cooling fault gets fixed at the plant and not on a hill with a full drum.

Electronic DVIR in the driver app walks the driver through the mixer-specific checklist, including the chutes, the water system and the drum drive, and a defect reaches the shop before the first batch. The same platform holds the fuel record per truck, with idling reported per site so the plant sees which jobs burn diesel waiting.

Many ready-mix drivers do not, because they work close to the plant and come back every day. In the United States, 49 CFR 395.1(e)(1) exempts a driver from logs and ELDs when the driver stays within a 150 air-mile radius of the normal work reporting location and is released within 14 consecutive hours; the carrier keeps time records for 6 months instead. In Canada, section 77 of the federal Commercial Vehicle Drivers Hours of Service Regulations lifts the ELD requirement for a driver who stays within 160 km of the home terminal and returns there each day to start at least 8 consecutive hours off duty, provided the carrier keeps records of the cycle and on-duty times for at least 6 months. That federal rule covers extra-provincial carriers; a carrier that never leaves its province follows its province's rules, so confirm with your provincial regulator.

US rules also give mixer drivers one specific allowance. Under 49 CFR 395.1(t), a ready-mixed concrete driver who must take the 30-minute break may count 30 minutes or more spent waiting with the truck at a job site or terminal, as long as the driver does no other work during that time. Geofence arrival and departure times at each site show when that waiting happened, and the plant geofence gives the office a daily start and release time to check against its records. Trucks that run outside these limits, such as long hauls to a remote project, still need an ELD.

Start with the drum. Ask how each system reads it and on which of your mixers. On the High Point GPS platform, Geotab's IOX-AUXM module reads four on/off signals per module, up to eight with two modules, on GO7 and newer devices, and we check each mixer's wiring before quoting. Then ask how loads are timed: geofences around the plant, the job sites and the washout pad should move each truck's status without the driver touching anything.

Next, look at the software around the trucks. The tracking should connect to the batching and dispatch system you already run, through an open API, so the ticket and the truck's position share one record. Aggregate and dump trucks, loaders and trailers should sit on the same map as the mixers, so the yard is one fleet in one place. Finally, ask who installs on heavy trucks and who answers when a unit stops reporting. High Point GPS installs with professional installers across North America, including Montreal, and supports fleets in English and French.

Make a list of your mixers and support trucks with make, model year and drum controls, and note the batching and dispatch software the plant runs. High Point GPS, a Geotab partner in Montreal, uses that list to match each truck to a device and harness, plan the drum inputs and scope the dispatch connection. Use the free quote form on this page to send it.