What Does the GPS Tracking Device Track? GPS Tracking Data and Features

The GPS tracking device tracks a vehicle's position, what the engine reports, and how the vehicle moves, drawing its GPS tracking data from three sources in one box. A GNSS receiver gives position, speed and heading. An accelerometer measures motion, such as braking, acceleration, cornering and impacts, independent of the engine. The connection to the vehicle's onboard diagnostics passes on what the vehicle itself knows: engine on and off, RPM, odometer, fuel, fault codes, and hundreds of other parameters depending on the make. Nearly everything a fleet uses comes from one of these sources, or from a rule that combines them.

Here are the core data points and the job each one does.

The GPS tracking device has no microphone and no camera, so it records no audio, no video and nothing said in the cab. Video comes only from a separate camera connected through the IOX port, and the fleet configures that camera's recording rules. The device doesn't read the driver's phone, and it doesn't track a person who is out of the vehicle. During personal conveyance, the ELD record stores location at reduced precision, although the fleet's own map still shows the vehicle.

The device also knows only what the vehicle tells it. Fuel level, seat belt status and some engine parameters depend on the make and model exposing them, and an older or unusual vehicle may report fewer of them. Check the specific vehicle before you promise anyone a specific report.

The device doesn't log at a fixed interval. It records a point whenever the vehicle's motion changes enough that a straight line between points would misrepresent the path. This curve-based logging keeps the trip shape accurate on corners without filling the record with identical highway points. Position accuracy depends on the receiver: typically within a few metres under open sky, and worse in dense urban canyons or under cover. Data reaches the platform over cellular in near real time. When there is no signal, the device buffers it and sends it once coverage returns.

Two fleets with the same devices can get very different value from them, depending on which data they act on. Position alone tells you where a vehicle is. Engine hours and fault codes tell you when it is likely to break down, idle time shows where the fuel is going, and accelerometer events point to the drivers who need coaching. The device records all of it from the day it is installed, so a fleet that starts with the map and never opens the rest uses a fraction of what it paid for.

The device records dozens of parameters, and a fleet acts on a handful. These drive most reports and rules, each with the decision it supports.

The device keeps recording when coverage drops and uploads the stored records once it reaches a cellular network again. Geotab's documentation says the GO device stores all recorded data, with date and time, in its internal memory while coverage is poor or missing, then sends it to the server when the vehicle is back in range. The trip shows up late on the map, with its full path.

That memory has a ceiling. The GO10 has 32 MB of flash storage, and Geotab's support document for the GO9, the previous generation that many fleets still run, lists up to 80,000 logs in offline mode. Because the device logs on curves instead of at a fixed interval, that capacity covers long stretches out of range, such as a forestry road or a northern route. For drivers on the Geotab Drive app, the hours of service record comes from the same device data: while offline, the app still shows logs up to the point where the vehicle left coverage, and the driver can show them to an officer.

A power cut is a different case. The GO10 carries an onboard energy store (a supercapacitor) that lets it write data to flash memory and attempt a last-gasp message when it loses power, and it sends a high-priority alert when it detects that it has been disconnected. If someone pulls the device to hide a trip, the fleet sees when and where the power went.

A geofence alert is a rule tied to a zone: you draw an area on the map, such as the yard, a customer site or an entire province or state, and the platform records an event when a vehicle enters it, exits it, stops inside it or is outside it. Zones can be grouped by type (customer, home, office), so one rule can cover every customer site at once.

Each rule can notify people by email, popup, SMS or in-cab driver feedback, with templates that set what the message says. Rules also combine conditions: a zone exit joined to a time condition flags a vehicle leaving the yard after hours, and an idling or speeding rule limited to a zone shows what happens on one site only.

Two settings decide whether an alert fires. Rules for entering or being inside a zone trigger on GPS logs recorded inside it, not on the line drawn between logs, so a very small zone can miss a vehicle that passes through quickly. And the vehicle and the rule must belong to the same group. Draw zones generously around the places where vehicles stop, then test each rule with one vehicle before you roll it out.

Write down the decisions you want the data to support: idle cost, maintenance timing, driver coaching, arrival times at customer sites. Then check which data points from the tables above feed each one, and confirm that each vehicle in your fleet reports them.

High Point GPS is a Montreal fleet telematics company and Geotab partner. We install the tracking device through professional installers, set up the zones, rules and reports with you, and support your team in English and French across Canada and the United States. Choose Get a free quote on this page and tell us what you want to measure.