GAP Hire adopts CanTrack telematics

UK rental company GAP Hire Solutions said it had adopted CanTrack Asset telematics technology for use on a wide range of its equipment.

It said the multi-year contract was awarded to CanTrack after a selection and tender process conducted by GAP’s management team.

GAP Hire Solutions joint managing director Iain Anderson said, “Unfortunately equipment theft is a fact of life that GAP is trying to eliminate.

"We work with like-minded people across the hire industry from the Construction Equipment Association (CEA), Hire Association Europe (HAE), the Construction Plant-hire Association (CPA) and Combined Industries Theft Solutions (CITS) to minimise the risks of theft and fraud with a common goal to eradicate both problems.

“This move, to fit CanTrack Asset to a wide range of our machines, is a very positive step in the fight against equipment theft and fraud.

"We’re very impressed with CanTrack’s technology, their processes and above all their effectiveness. No one else comes close to their recovery rate, which is over 90%, according to CanTrack. I’m confident that if we do have machinery or equipment stolen, it will be tracked, traced and recovered.”

The CanTrack Asset units, the compact T7 and T9 extended battery capacity model, boast a Europe-wide roaming capability that works on any network and with automated switching to GSM signalling should GPS be unavailable.

The unit will still report its location, even if it’s in a machine hidden in a panel van or container. The highly accurate daily reporting of location and status is said to make assets easy to recover when stolen, while CanTrack also provides an effective stolen machine investigation service that’s included in the annual subscription charge.

CanTrack’s investigators are all former police officers - over 90% of stolen CanTrack Asset equipped machines have been recovered, according to the company. This compares to an overall recovery rate of just 9%, according to the Met Police’s Plant and Agricultural National Intelligence Unit (PANIU).

As well as asset tracking, the technology also has an integrated monitoring capability that can measure and transmit ambient temperature, motion detection, roll-over alert, equipment damage, un-authorised machine movement and utilisation statistics. All this information is available through CanTrack’s web browser, which is accessible to registered users from any internet enabled device.