Most buying guides cover features. The questions that actually cause regret later are about contracts, data ownership and how the hardware gets fitted. These are the ones we'd want asked.
1. What is the term, and what happens at the end of it? Multi-year terms are normal. Automatic renewal on the same term is also common, and it catches people. Ask what notice period applies.
2. Is the hardware bought or leased? This determines what happens when you leave. If the hardware is leased, you may be returning it, which affects both the exit cost and whether removal labour is yours.
3. What happens to my historical data if I cancel? Ask specifically: can you export it, in what format, and for how long after cancellation is it available? Years of trip history has real value in a dispute, and finding out it's gone is a bad day.
4. What is the total per-vehicle monthly cost including everything? Base subscription, data, camera storage or footage retrieval, add-on modules, support tier. Get one number.
5. How often does it report, and what happens between reports? This matters more than people realise. Fixed-interval polling — a position every 30 or 60 seconds — produces inaccurate mileage and paths that appear to cut through buildings when a turn falls between samples. Some systems, Geotab among them, use curve-based logging instead, keeping only the points needed to reconstruct the actual path within a set error margin. Ask which approach you're getting.
6. Can it read engine data, or only position? Fault codes, battery voltage, fuel level and engine hours come off the vehicle bus. Position-only devices can't give you maintenance signals, which removes one of the larger savings categories.
7. Can I get PTO, door, lift gate or reefer status? On service and utility fleets this is often the point of the exercise. It usually requires an auxiliary input module wired to the relevant circuit, not just the main device — which is an installation question as much as a hardware one.
8. Are alert thresholds configurable per vehicle group? Default speed and harsh-braking thresholds are calibrated for interstate driving. Run them on a fleet working US highways through small towns, or descending mountain grades, and you'll generate constant false alerts until everyone stops reading them.
9. Plug-in or hardwired? A plug-in OBD device sits in a port the driver can reach. If part of your reason for deploying is accountability, that's a problem you're creating for yourself. Hardwired costs more up front and removes the argument.
10. Who is actually doing the install, and what happens if something goes wrong with the vehicle afterwards? Ask this before, not after. Telematics is 12-volt work on someone else's asset. The ATA's Technology & Maintenance Council publishes recommended practices specifically for this — RP 1206 covers placement and structural requirements for heavy-duty navigation and communication devices, and RP 1207A covers the cab electronic accessory power interface. The existence of dedicated recommended practices tells you this is a trade, not a plug-in task.
11. Will the installer document each vehicle? Photo documentation per unit protects both sides. It also tends to be a procurement requirement for government and institutional fleets.
12. Will they measure parasitic draw before and after? A properly installed device that sleeps correctly draws very little — Geotab's GO9 specification lists 1.5 mA at sleep against 60–300 mA active. Drain complaints usually come from a device wired to a constant-hot circuit that should have been switched, or one that never sleeps because of a bad ignition-sense connection. Measuring the vehicle's baseline draw before and after, and recording the delta, turns that from an argument into a number.
13. Can they install at my yard? Driving vehicles to a shop and back is frequently a bigger disruption than the install. On a small fleet it can double the downtime.
14. What happens when I switch providers later? Removal of the old hardware, correction of any previous wiring, and installation of the new platform should happen in one visit so each vehicle only comes out of service once. Ask whether that's included.
What can this not do for my fleet?
Anyone who answers "nothing, it does everything" is selling. A straight answer sounds more like: it won't fix a badly maintained truck, it won't fix understaffed dispatch, and the fuel benefit decays without ongoing coaching — the UC Davis meta-analysis of 17 studies measured that decay at roughly 0.1% per day.
You want the person who tells you that before you sign, not after.
What happens to your historical data if you cancel. Years of trip history is genuinely valuable in a billing dispute or a claim, and people rarely ask about export format or retention period until they're leaving.
For anything involving accountability, yes. A plug-in OBD device sits in a port the driver can reach and can be unplugged or knocked loose. Hardwired installation costs more up front and eliminates a category of dispute you'd otherwise have to manage.
Fixed-interval polling misses what happens between samples, which produces inaccurate mileage and paths that appear to cut corners through buildings. Curve-based logging keeps only the points needed to reconstruct the real path within a defined error margin, which gives you accurate distance without high-rate polling.
Yes, and it's rarely asked. A correctly installed device that sleeps properly draws very little — Geotab's GO9 spec lists 1.5 mA sleeping. Drain problems almost always trace to wiring choices, not to the device's rated draw. Ask whether the installer measures before and after and records the difference.
We install every major platform across Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina, and we're happy to be asked all fourteen of these. If you're mid-way through evaluating options and want an installer's view of what you're being offered, call us — we'd rather you buy the right thing than the thing we happen to be fitting that week.
Get a free quote from API Signal → or call/text 803-513-1009. We install across Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina, and we come to your yard.
We install GPS, cameras and telematics across GA, SC & NC — at your yard, on your schedule.