Know where the truck is without phoning the driver

Fitted at your depot, at night

Both fitment teams work the Reef, Isando out to Vereeniging and Rustenburg. Twelve vehicles a shift, done between last delivery and first shift, on a fused loom no mechanic will curse us for later.

One page every Monday

Kilometres, idling, speeding and after-hours movement, per vehicle, on one page in the controller's inbox by seven. Nobody has to log into anything to read it.

A control room, not an app

Two people in Isando watching alarms from six in the morning until ten at night, and an after-hours number a person answers. Recovery starts with a phone call, not a support ticket.

Thirty seconds, not five minutes

Position every thirty seconds while moving, and straight away on ignition, harsh braking, a tow or a jammer. If a unit loses power you know inside two minutes.

What actually goes into the vehicle

A Teltonika unit with its own backup battery, wired behind the dash on a fused loom — no scotch-locks, no insulation tape, nothing spliced into the immobiliser. Rigids and bakkies get a driver-tag reader on the A-pillar. Trailers, TLBs and bowsers get a solar unit magnet-mounted somewhere nobody stands on it. The hardware stays ours. If a unit fails we replace it that week and there is nothing to pay for it. If you leave us we come out and take them all back out properly, because dead boxes behind a dashboard become somebody else's problem for the next ten years.

Who you actually phone

Spoor has been in Herman Street, Isando since 2013. There are eleven of us: two fitment teams, two controllers, a workshop, and Hannes, who does the invoicing and phones you back the same day. Somebody from here comes out in your first month and sits with your controller for an hour, because a fleet system nobody in the office understands is worth nothing. If you would rather have the reports emailed than log into a portal at all, say so and that is how we set it up.

Marlow Transport

142 rigids and links running Bethlehem to Durban and back. With us since 2015.

Kaap Koeldiens

Sixty-one refrigerated panel vans out of Paarl and Epping, with load temperature on the same screen.

Ntuli Plant Hire

Twenty-four TLBs, excavators and bowsers around Middelburg, every one of them on a solar unit.

Rooibult Boerdery

Nine bakkies, four tractors and a diesel bowser outside Bothaville. Smallest fleet we run.

Two of them, in their own words

We paid for tracking before this and I could not tell you one thing it changed. The Monday page showed four drivers idling forty minutes a shift at the Harrismith stop. We sorted that out and the diesel bill dropped by more than Spoor costs us.

Riaan Botha · Fleet controller, Marlow Transport, Bethlehem

A TLB walked off a site outside Hendrina at two in the morning. I phoned the after-hours number, a person answered, and the machine was standing in a yard in Witbank by half past six. That is the whole reason I pay.

Nomsa Dhlamini · Owner, Ntuli Plant Hire, Middelburg