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Darryl Lawrence with a Zalawi Haulage interlink, bound for Zambia.

There are scores of businesses in South Africa providing vehicle tracking and fleet management services to the road transport industry. Some have been around for several years and are world leaders in their respective fields. Others are newcomers to the game, battling to get a foothold in a market that has been sullied by several fly-by-night operators. One way of sidestepping an industry stigma is to offer a service that is so dissimilar to the general offerings that potential customers regard it with fresh eyes, untainted by the memories of burnt fingers writes Paul Collings.

One such company is Advanced Telematics, a division of the AC-TEC Group. The company is a so-called VARS (Value-added Reseller) of several leading fleet management and tracking systems as well as an accredited service agent for leading truck instrumentation products.

Says Darryl Lawrence, MD, Advanced Telematics: "We initially started our operation as Control Instruments East Rand in 2004, in the heart of the East Rand industrial area. The main focus of the business was fleet management systems, tachographs to the transport industry and clock cards to factories. Since opening, our staff has increased from five to 10 members and our turnover has grown by 100% in the first five months of 2005. We have now changed our name to AC-TEC with three branches in Gauteng, one in Cape Town and one in Durban."

Ruling out Failure
What makes Lawrence's operation different is its focus on providing a spread of products from various suppliers/manufacturers along with customised services handling both hardware maintenance and fleet management information reports.

"Our biggest client is Zalawi Haulage and Rainbow Investments, a cross border transport company. We have installed 189 fleet management units in the fleet and maintain the 'black box' batteries, speedometers, other vehicle instruments and consolidate reports from the fleet management system," he says.

Advanced Telematics also implements procedures to ensure each activity and repair is noted and forms part of a monthly report. "These reports indicate to the client what was done on the fleet on a daily to monthly basis."Electronics do fail and need to be serviced and checked regularly. We provide a permanent on-site manager to Zalawi Haulage and this attention to detail has ensured that the two trucks hijacked over recent months were both recovered intact."

Instrumentation repair specialists
Unitrans Freight is another big client. "We currently repair speedometers, tachographs and rev-counters for 80 vehicles. We're actually a preferred supplier because of our quick turnaround times, so important to keeping trucks on the move," says Lawrence. Other well-known transport clients include Triton Express, running 50 fleet management systems installed by Advanced Telematics. "Driver performance has been improved by 30% across the fleet saving the company thousands in vehicle maintenance bills," claims Lawrence. 

Time Freight Holdings is another big customer with 300 vehicles falling under the watchful eye of Lawrence and his team who analyse all the company's tacho charts and provide management reports to the fleet manager enabling him to keep running costs down and vehicles on the road. 

"Advanced Telematics has recently secured an order to install 400 speed and engine revolution limiters across the entire UNB Breweries fleet," says Lawrence. "This is our first national project and we've installed in a few dozen vehicles. The company is already seeing the benefits of the technologies like a significant reduction in speeding fines and as much as a 30% saving on truck maintenance."

It certainly is interesting to see how 'specialisation' succeeds in what is already a specialised field. Advanced Telematics is a young operation but has already shown exceptional growth and has recently acquired BEE partners.

An Advanced Telematics service vehicle which enables technicians to conduct on-site maintenance and roadside repairs if needed.