When the United States military needed help with global navigation, they developed a method of navigation by satellite that would allow their land, sea and air units to accurately ascertain where they were on the globe. After almost twenty years of exclusive military use, the GPS system was made available for commercial purposes. The result of the switch to commercial use in the 1990’s is the ubiquitous presence of GPS devices in our life. GPS for children is used by nervous parents who want to keep track of their children. Simply placing a device in the child’s watch, shoes, clothing or cell phone can ease the worried mind of any parent. GPS navigation in your car can also help you get to your destination without any wrong turns or aggravation. And GPS can even help companies employ vehicle tracking in order to increase profits and decrease costs.

As long as there have been shipping companies, there have existed methods to track their shipments to customers. Old methods to track the shipments included such mundane and inaccurate methods as carrier pigeon or passersby returning to the point of origin. Using GPS vehicle tracking, modern day companies can get real-time information on exactly where their vehicles and the shipments are.

The ability to utilize vehicle tracking is a boon to companies. These companies are better able to keep track of mileage records on all of their vehicles. This keeps the vehicles from breaking down and extends the useful life of the vehicles themselves.  The result for the companies is the avoidance of unneeded costs to purchase replacement vehicles.

Another benefit of vehicle tracking is so that the companies can get accurate information on the location of the shipments to their customers. If a shipment is going to be late (or early) the company can provide this information to their customers. This allows the company to manage expectations of their clients and increases the likelihood of gaining more clients.