How to Track Heavy Machinery

If you build office buildings, drill for oil or gas, repair highways, or engage in any other kind of large construction or maintenance projects, you know the importance of efficiently tracking and managing your heavy machinery.

Keeping close tabs on your bulldozers, graders, cranes, and loaders helps keep the job on schedule and within budget. Without a system for monitoring project assignments, hours, location, maintenance and other critical data, you could be leaving a lot of money on the table.

Tenna makes it easy to capture this critical information with our proprietary IoT (Internet of Things) GPS asset tracking system. This comprehensive software system stores the data on the same consolidated equipment tracking platform as all of your other smaller assets. You can track your entire inventory on one integrated asset tracking system, instead of having to go back and forth between different programs.

Knowing the location and status of every piece of heavy machinery in your inventory is the first step in optimizing equipment utilization. But heavy machinery tracking with Tenna can take your asset management efforts to a whole new level. With our software you can:

• Reduce repair and maintenance costs with proactive maintenance scheduling.
• Improve operator efficiency and reduce fuel consumption by tracking and eliminating wasteful habits such as excess idling or misusing machinery.
• Prevent theft with automatic alerts when machinery leaves the jobsite.
• Increase government fuel tax refunds by accurately tracking off-road fuel usage.
• Save on insurance premiums by using geo-fencing alerts.
• Reduce accidents and worker’s compensation claims by monitoring and correcting unsafe driver behavior.
• Improve job estimates by using past data to accurately calculate job costs.

By managing your fleet and your operating expenses more effectively, your entire team can work more efficiently and put more dollars on your company’s bottom line.

How It Works

GPS Trackers

Tenna’s heavy machinery GPS trackers are remarkably easy to use. Simply attach the tracking devices to your equipment or vehicle’s onboard diagnostic ports and they automatically capture hours, miles, location, and maintenance tracking records in real-time. Moreover, they do this without involvement from drivers or other crewmembers.  They can either use power from your vehicles, or use their own long-life batteries (giving you more flexibility to install them in discrete locations).

Bluetooth Asset Tracking

If you don’t need this much information, or if you have older machinery that doesn’t have onboard diagnostic ports, our Bluetooth asset tracking system enables you to collect and transmit basic location data. They can be set up for employees to scan using their smartphones or tablets, or they can be set up to transmit to other Tenna GPS trackers, giving you truly automatic data capture.

GPS Tracking Solutions

We also offer GPS tracking solutions with two technologies: One consists of cellular data plans — like those you would have with a cellphone or tablet — to track, locate and log heavy equipment information that is frequently on the move. Our other approach uses our LoRa GPS devices with long-range, low-power wireless platforms to build an asset tracking network without using the cellular networks. Regardless of where your machinery travels, you’re never out of touch.

One of the biggest advantages of Tenna tracking software is having everything integrated into one system. Instead of using separate asset tracking systems for different types of heavy machinery, you get the efficiency and consistency of collecting and recording your critical information all on one consolidated platform. Your team can focus on getting the job done rather than spend time managing multiple tracking systems.

Protect Your Heavy Equipment and Your Bottom Line

Purchasing, operating and maintaining heavy equipment and machinery is a major expense for any business. Tenna asset tracking software can extend the service life of your heavy equipment – and lower capital investment requirements – by helping protect it.

Our GPS trackers can monitor almost everything from engine starts and stops to usage hours and accurate maintenance histories for each piece of equipment. They can also send out alerts when something goes wrong with a piece of machinery or the scheduled maintenance date has come and gone. This data can allow you to proactively schedule and monitor required maintenance to get the full life expectancy from your equipment. It may also reduce the costs of unexpected repairs due to missed maintenance. When you know the true cost of owning and operating your heavy equipment, you make better decisions regarding utilization, replacement and job estimates.

Keep in mind that an asset tracking system should not force you to change the way you do business. Instead, it should enhance your knowledge of the business by providing a wealth of data about your costliest assets. Other considerations when purchasing this kind of system include:

• Can the hardware (asset trackers) stand up to the rigors of your work environment? 
• Does the vender offer both cellular and non-cellular coverage?
• Does the messaging network have a track record of reliability?
• Is the transmission of data from work site to the office secure?
• Is the stored data secure?

Most of all, does the software provider understand your business and have experience providing tracking solutions for your industry? If you look at Tenna software, you will find the answers to these questions are an unqualified “yes”.

Find out how much your business could save with Tenna by trying our ROI calculator. It’s quick, easy to use. You may be surprised at what you learn.