In an age where transportation costs escalate year-on-year, the wisest of fleet managers have found ways to cut the costs of transportation by using motorbikes. The advantages of using motorbikes far outweigh the negatives, and by using motorbikes, transporters cut costs while creating jobs.
But in any form of transportation, an operation needs vehicle and asset tracking to ensure that their goods reach their consumers safely and save costs in fuel consumption. And unfortunately, up until now, vehicle tracking and fuel monitoring systems were still very primitive, grounded in ‘beta-testing’ stage.
Globaltrack’s aim is to make the costs of transportation cheaper in Africa. With the development of new technologies suited for the NGO community, Globaltrack hopes to achieve this aim by passing tried and tested technologies on to all transporters in Africa, helping them to save costs which will benefit those who need it the most.
World Vision Ghana is a humanitarian and development organisation devoted to providing quality emergency relief, education, health care, economic development, and promotion of justice in Ghana and various countries around the world.
Expanding their operations further into Ghana meant having to deal with incomplete or even unmapped dirt roads. The use of heavy duty trucks no longer seemed viable, and the NGO opted for motorbikes as a form of transportation. But while motorbikes saved tremendous costs for the NGO, their fleet managers did not have a reliable form of tracking to map often uncharted and dangerous routes.
World Vision Ghana realised that a tracking solution for their bikes needed to become a reality. The NGO approached Globaltrack, who they have worked with for the past decade providing tracking and fuel solutions for their larger truck fleet, to see if Globaltrack could provide a solution for their growing fleet of motorbikes.
Globaltrack, in cooperation with World Vision Ghana, developed the GSM-940 unit to help the NGO track the whereabouts of their growing motorbike fleet at a local-level, ensuring that they remain safe on Ghana’s treacherous roads and unsafe militia filled areas. Reporting on the GSM Cellular Network only, allowed Globaltrack to keep the costs down for the NGO.
Globaltrack installed one GSM-940 unit on of World Vision’s motorbikes as a test. Their driver was then tasked to go about his daily operations, travelling about 100 km each way leaving Accra.
Travelling from urban tarred roads to a remote village, would usually take the driver hours to navigate, with no word to the central office about his whereabouts until he reached his destination or placed a phone call with them. But with the GSM-940 unit installed, the central office in Accra was able to monitor his whereabouts and status of the vehicle in real time.
Globaltrack’s user-friendly Webtrack software enabled World Vision’s fleet manager to map out routes through the use of waypoints, and was alerted when their driver would deviate off route or enter a potentially dangerous area.
Arriving safely at his destination, with the fleet managers being able to see every detail of the journey in driver behaviour, route planning and fuel management, World Vision Ghana was overjoyed with the success of the test.
World Vision Ghana’s fleet managers jumped at the opportunity to install the unit on all of their motorbike assets.
