API Signal installs fleet GPS trackers, dash cameras and telematics for businesses in Hartsville and across Darlington County, at the shop, the farm, the yard or the owner's driveway, from McBee and Society Hill to Lamar and Bishopville. We install for trades running 1 to 10 vehicles, cotton growers and gin haulers, carriers serving the paper mill and the steel mill, and the contractors who follow the nuclear plant's refueling calendar.
Trades with 1 to 10 vehicles, farm and gin trucks, carriers for the paper and steel mills, and the contractors who serve the nuclear plant. The Census Bureau counts 62,888 people in Darlington County as of July 2025, spread over 560 square miles, with 1,121 employer establishments in 2023. State labor data built on Census commuting files shows 15,887 county residents leaving the county for work in 2023, against 9,275 who both live and work in it. We install for electricians, HVAC companies, plumbers, roofers and pest control operators with 1 to 10 vehicles, whether the day's jobs are on Carolina Avenue or a county away.
Paper and steel set the freight. Sonoco, founded in 1899, gives 1 North Second Street in Hartsville as its headquarters, and it said in 2022 that its mill complex on Black Creek makes almost a third of the company's uncoated recycled paperboard for the United States and Canada. Sonoco Recycling is registered as a motor carrier at the same address, and its January 2026 federal filing listed 63 trucks and 48 drivers across the company. In Darlington, Nucor's first mini mill went into production in 1969, and in March 2025 Universal Industrial Gases announced a plant of nearly $100 million on Steel Mill Road to supply the Nucor mill.
Farming is the other big fleet. In the 2022 Census of Agriculture, Darlington County ranked first in South Carolina for cotton and cottonseed sales, at $30.7 million. Its 314 farms had 36,678 acres in cotton, 28,147 in soybeans, 20,672 in corn and 5,163 in peanuts. That crop moves on module trucks, grain trucks, trailers and farm pickups, and Hartsville has a cotton gin of its own on Sumter Street.
Power and the Sandhills fill in the rest. Duke Energy's Robinson Nuclear Plant sits about five miles west-northwest of town, and Duke said in April 2026 that it supports nearly 500 jobs. MPD Electric Cooperative keeps more than 2,800 miles of line across seven counties, Darlington, Chesterfield and Lee among them. Up SC 151 in McBee, A.O. Smith builds water heaters, with 466 employees in Chesterfield County's 2026 industry directory, Primo Brands bottles water, and McLeod Farms, a family operation since 1916, grows peaches. Stingray Boats, founded in 1979, builds fiberglass boats in Hartsville.
Every major platform, installed for what Darlington County fleets really run: module and grain trucks in harvest, van trailers on mill runs, contractor pickups and trailers on solar and plant sites, and service vans whose jobs run past the county line.
Hardwired trackers on service vans, pickups, module trucks and grain trucks, battery-powered trackers on van trailers, equipment trailers and tool trailers, and geofences on the gin yard, the mill gate and each job site so loads and hours count themselves.
Road-facing cameras for the long rural runs on US 15 and SC 151 and for Main Street in Bishopville, driver-facing units where wanted, and rear cameras on module trucks backing under a load and on trucks backing to a mill dock.
Samsara, Motive, Lytx, Geotab, Verizon Connect, Netradyne, CalAmp, Powerfleet and more, with bed and PTO inputs on module, dump and roll-off trucks, door sensors on trailers, engine hours on site equipment, and miles by county for crews that cross into Florence, Chesterfield and Lee.
Wire the bed, seal the hardware and have it finished before picking starts. Darlington County led the state in cotton sales in the 2022 farm census, and the company that runs the Coker Gin at 311 Sumter Street in Hartsville says it has been in operation since 1926 and can process 1,000 bales a day. Cotton Incorporated notes that round modules can weigh over 6,000 pounds each and are staged four to a module truck or six to a semi-trailer. USDA's weekly counts for 2024 had 2% of the state's cotton picked on September 22 and 61% on November 3, so nearly all of that crop came off after late September.
On a module truck we mount the tracker inside the cab, away from lint and dust, and wire an input from the bed hydraulics so every load shows on the map with a time and a field. A geofence on the gin yard counts deliveries and shows how long each truck waited to unload. A rear camera covers the blind spot when the driver backs the tilting chain-floor bed under a module. We do the work at the farm or the hauler's yard in late summer, before the trucks are needed.
Before the crews mobilize, at your own yard. Duke Energy says Robinson runs continuously for two years and then shuts down for scheduled refueling and maintenance. Nuclear Regulatory Commission status reports show the unit down for refueling from November 19, 2022 and from November 5, 2024, and at zero power again from the first days of October 2026, the month a contractor staffing list published that spring had set for the next refueling shutdown. In April 2026 the commission renewed the plant's license for 20 more years, to 2050.
For an outage contractor the questions are hours and equipment. We set a geofence on the plant entrance and on each laydown or lodging point, so arrival and departure times back up the timesheets you bill from. Tool trailers, welders and light towers get battery-powered trackers that report where each one was left when the job closes out. We schedule that work for the weeks ahead of the shutdown, so every unit is reporting before the first shift.
It puts machines on large sites well away from the shop, and that calls for trackers on equipment and trailers as well as trucks. Darlington County's administrator told County Council in March 2026 that approximately 12,000 acres in the county were being used for solar farms. On September 10, 2026 the council voted 5 to 3 against a nine-month moratorium on new solar and wind development, and at the same meeting gave first reading to rules on setbacks and planted buffers for new sites. A resident speaking that day described prospective sites of 400 and 600 acres.
For the grading, fencing, trenching, electrical and mowing contractors who work sites like those, we fit hardwired trackers that record engine hours on skid steers, trenchers and mowers, battery-powered units on trailers and attachments, and a geofence on every site so a machine that moves at night raises an alert. Hours by site also give a mowing or maintenance contractor a clean record to invoice from.
Put trackers on the trailers and measure the time each one spends at a dock. In October 2022 Sonoco said its Hartsville Mill Complex had moved to 100% recycled fiber, ending virgin pulp processing there, and the rebuilt No. 10 machine was planned for 180,000 tons of paperboard a year, about 500 tons a day. Sonoco Recycling lists paper products and recycled goods as its cargo on its federal motor carrier registration.
We fit battery or solar-powered trackers on van trailers, mounted clear of forklift masts and dock bumpers, with door sensors where a shipper asks for them. A geofence on the mill and on each supplier's dock reports turn time per load, which is the number a detention claim rests on. Tractors and roll-off trucks on recycling routes get hardwired trackers with a PTO input, so each container pull is logged with its time and place.
Darlington County, and into Chesterfield and Lee counties:
Farm shed, mill lot, contractor yard or driveway, from McBee to Lamar: the vehicles stay where they park and we come to them.
Yes, and it is the work we plan for first. Three vans get the same wiring, the same testing and the same paperwork as a rollout of eighty trucks. For 1 to 10 vehicles we come to the shop or the owner's home, and typical scheduling is 3 to 5 days out.
Verizon Connect, Motive, Netradyne, Samsara, Powerfleet, Lytx, CalAmp, Geotab and more. We are independent, so we install the system you have chosen, and we also offer equipment when you want it supplied with the install. If a mill, a utility or a general contractor requires its own device or camera in your truck, we install that one too.
SCDOT took public comment on the replacement in spring 2026, and the schedule it published showed right-of-way acquisition in fall 2026 and construction starting in fall 2027, lasting roughly 6 to 12 months. The bridge is on US 15 about 2 miles west of Lydia, half a mile from the Lee County line. A geofence on that stretch gives you run times from before, during and after the work to compare.
Yes. SCDOT's page for the proposed Bishopville truck route says over 700 large commercial trucks a day were using Main Street, US 15, when the study began in 2010, and its later traffic model put the figure above 1,900. A 2017 federal notice describes that street as two lanes with a raised median and on-street parking. Until a truck route is built, a road-facing camera is the record of what happened beside those parked cars.
Yes, and to Lydia, Kelleytown, Patrick and the farms between them. We work throughout Darlington County and into Chesterfield and Lee counties. Trucks kept at several farms, yards or homes are planned as one job, and each one is fitted where it normally parks.
Tell us what you run, where it parks and when harvest, an outage or a contract starts, and we will have it fitted before the work begins.
Tell us your vehicle count, vehicle types and platform, and we will get back to you within 24 hours.
Answer a few quick questions and we will build your custom quote in minutes.
Get a Quote