Changing platforms is a bigger job than buying one for the first time, and the thing that costs most is sequencing it badly. Here's how it should go.
This is the step people skip and cannot undo.
Your existing platform holds trip history, mileage, event records and possibly footage. Some of that has real value — in a billing dispute, in an insurance claim, in demonstrating IFTA mileage. Once your contract ends, access to it may end too.
Before you give notice:
We've seen fleets discover after cancellation that three years of history was gone. Nothing about the install can fix that.
Two things to establish:
**Is the hardware owned or leased?** If leased, you may be returning it, which changes both the removal labour and who pays for it.
**When does the term actually end?** Automatic renewal on the original term is common. If you miss the notice window you can end up paying two subscriptions in parallel for a year.
Here is the sequencing that matters.
The wrong way: one crew removes the old hardware this month, a different crew fits the new hardware next month. Every vehicle comes off the road twice, and any wiring damage from removal gets discovered by the second crew, who now has to fix somebody else's problem while you watch the clock.
The right way: **removal and installation in the same visit**. Old device out, previous wiring inspected and corrected, new device in, verified reporting, documented. The vehicle comes out of service once.
That's how we do provider changes, and it's a large share of our work.
Consistently, and worth knowing before you assume the vehicle is clean:
**Devices wired to constant power** that should have been on a switched circuit. Often the actual cause of the "batteries keep dying" complaint the fleet has been living with. A correctly installed device draws very little at rest — Geotab's GO9 lists 1.5 mA sleeping against 60–300 mA active.
**Splices buried in the loom** with no fuse and no documentation. These are the ones that cause warranty arguments when an electrical fault shows up later.
**Auxiliary inputs on the wrong circuit.** A PTO input wired to a work light reports beautifully and means nothing. If your old platform's PTO data never quite matched reality, this is usually why.
**Adhesive damage and drilled holes** from camera mounts placed badly the first time. Windscreen placement in particular is worth getting right, because moving it leaves marks.
**Corrosion at connectors** on anything working near salt air. Charleston Harbor reached flood stage 54 times in 2024; vehicles that drive through standing saltwater punish unsealed connections.
New platform, same fleet — and a very common mistake is accepting the vendor's default alert thresholds.
Defaults are calibrated for interstate driving. Run them on a fleet working US highways through small towns, or descending mountain grades in Western North Carolina, and you generate a flood of meaningless alerts. Within a month nobody reads them, and you've bought a map.
Set speed, harsh-braking and idle thresholds against how your vehicles actually drive. This is the difference between a system people use and a system people ignore.
Step 7 last. Overlapping by a few weeks costs one month of subscription and removes every risk of a gap.
Yes, and that's how it should be done. One visit means the vehicle comes out of service once instead of twice, and any wiring problems from the original install get corrected while we're already in the dash. Provider changes are a large share of our work.
Export your data first. Trip history, mileage records and event footage have real value in disputes and claims, and access often ends when the contract does. Pull everything, confirm what footage retention actually allows, and store it somewhere independent of the old provider.
No. Overlap by a few weeks. One extra month of subscription is cheap insurance against a coverage gap, and it lets you confirm the new platform is reporting correctly on every vehicle before you lose the old one.
Sequencing. Removing hardware in one visit and installing in another doubles downtime and means the second crew inherits any damage from the first. After that, the most common problem is accepting vendor default alert thresholds, which are calibrated for interstate driving and produce constant false alerts on local or mountain routes.
We handle provider changes across Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina — removal, wiring correction, new install, configuration and verification, in a single visit per vehicle at your yard. If you're mid-way through evaluating a switch and want to know what your existing hardware is likely hiding, call us.
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.