RESEARCH ARTICLE


Assessing Real Time GPS Asset Tracking for Timber Haulage



Ger J. Devlin*, Kevin McDonnel
Biosystems Engineering Department, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland.


Article Metrics

CrossRef Citations:
7
Total Statistics:

Full-Text HTML Views: 218
Abstract HTML Views: 472
PDF Downloads: 246
Total Views/Downloads: 936
Unique Statistics:

Full-Text HTML Views: 144
Abstract HTML Views: 276
PDF Downloads: 191
Total Views/Downloads: 611



Creative Commons License
© 2009 Devlin and McDonnell;

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the Biosystems Engineering Department, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland; Tel: +35317167418; Fax: +35317167415; E-mail: ger.devlin@ucd.ie


Abstract

This paper discusses the background to real-time GPS asset tracking in the context of 1) monitoring moving vehicles, 2) the content of the GPS data that is provided as part of the 2 systems that were tested, 3) the theory behind the installation of such tracking systems in terms of GPS, GPRS and internet communications and finally, 4) the assessment of the economic benefits of both systems is also discussed. This involved the installation of 2 different GPS asset tracking providers, Bluetree and Fleetmatics onto 2 timber haulage trucks – an articulated Iveco Stralis 530 6* 2 tractor unit with tri-axle road friendly air suspension flat bed trailer with a design gross vehicle weight (d.g.v.w.) equal to 44 000kg. The Scania 124 (400) was a rigid (3 axle) + trailer (3 axle) + crane combination with an equivalent d.g.v.w. of 44 000kg.

Keywords: Real-time GPS, asset tracking, timber haulage, vehicle reports, engine diagnostics, economic analysis.