Vehicle Tracking for Car rental companies

Every rental turns on a driver file that has to be complete before the keys move: licence, minimum age, proof of insurance, and an authorisation hold that has to be placed and later released against the right card. A counter clerk assembling that from four systems on a Friday afternoon is where the queue and the exposure both come from.

The other half is the walkaround. Fuel level, odometer and existing damage recorded with photographs at collection and again at return, held against that VIN rather than against the booking, is what decides a damage claim in six weeks. Cars also move between branches and airports, so the location on the record has to keep up with a vehicle that was dropped somewhere it did not start.

Between a return and the next pickup sit refuelling, a valet and a condition check. That gap is short, and a car promised for two o'clock that is still being cleaned at ten past is the booking that gets refunded.

A tracker on the car closes the gap between the driver file and the vehicle. Position sits against the VIN beside the walkaround photos, and a boundary alert is what tells you a car has crossed a state line the rental agreement did not cover.

What the platform does here is narrow and specific. The same trackers fitted to the vehicles you rent out, with a boundary drawn around where a rental is allowed to go and an alert to the office when one crosses it.

The problem it removes: learning that a vehicle left the island at the point it fails to come back. The number to watch is out-of-zone events caught while the vehicle is still easy to reach, and hours between the alert and the recovery.

The tracker that goes in a delivery van goes in a rental unit on the same integration. Position is held against that unit record, beside its serial, its condition history and the reservation it is out on, so the question of where a vehicle is has the same answer as the question of who has it.