Skid steers and compact track loaders visit more job sites than almost any other machine a contractor owns. They ride on open trailers, sit unattended overnight and get borrowed between crews. We install GPS trackers and telematics gateways on skid steers and compact track loaders across Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Alabama, Florida and Mississippi, on site where the machines work.
Theft is the first reason. Equipment theft reports from the National Equipment Register and the National Insurance Crime Bureau have listed skid steers as the most stolen type of construction machine for years. They are valuable, small enough to load onto a trailer behind a pickup in a few minutes, and easy to resell. Those same reports show most machines are taken from job sites rather than locked yards, and only around one in five stolen machines is ever recovered.
A tracker changes that. When a skid steer moves after hours or leaves the job site it belongs on, the owner gets an alert and can see where it is going, which gives police something to work with while the machine is still nearby.
The second reason is money that never shows up as a theft. Skid steers get moved between jobs without anyone writing it down, sit idle on one site while another crew rents a machine, and miss services because nobody knows how many hours are on them. Tracking puts every machine on one map with its hours next to it.
A skid steer packs a lot into a small frame. The operator sits in a steel cage, the loader arms pass close beside the cab, the engine sits behind the operator, and hydraulic lines run everywhere. Every one of those things works against a tracker: steel blocks the satellite signal, the arms and doors can pinch wiring, and the engine bay gets hot.
We look for a spot that is out of sight, protected from knocks and still able to see the sky. That is usually behind an interior panel at the rear of the cab or under a plastic or fiberglass cover rather than buried under steel. Where no spot gives a clean signal, we use a device with an external antenna. Hidden placement matters on a machine this easy to steal: a tracker a thief can see is a tracker a thief can pull off.
Wire colors and port pinouts are in our Vehicle Wiring Database.
Many newer skid steers leave the factory with the manufacturer's own telematics. An industry standard called AEMP 2.0, also published as ISO 15143-3, lets fleet platforms pull basic data such as location and engine hours from those factory systems. The catch is that the data is limited, it updates slower than a dedicated tracker, and each manufacturer handles it differently.
Most contractors run a mix of brands and model years, plus pickups and trailers. An aftermarket tracker from the same platform the trucks use puts every machine on one screen with the same alerts, whatever color it is painted.
We have put telematics gateways on skid steers working on job sites in South Carolina and North Carolina, and the hardest part is always the same: finding a clean mounting spot on a machine covered in dirt and grease. Read about that work on our fleet install stories page.
We install trackers on every kind of machine on a job site. See heavy equipment GPS tracking for the full list, or go straight to a machine: dozers · excavators · wheel loaders · backhoes · cranes.
Pinouts, port locations and wire colors are in our Vehicle Wiring Database.
Need heavy duty trackers for your equipment? Every brand below makes them, so pick yours and we install it on your machines.
Common questions
Yes. Compact track loaders are installed the same way as wheeled skid steers: a hidden mounting spot with a view of the sky, a true key-on ignition source and fused power.
Yes. We come to the machines, on the job site, in the yard or at the shop, across Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Alabama, Florida and Mississippi.
Yes. Attachments have no power of their own, so they get a battery-powered asset tracker mounted where it is protected and out of sight.
A properly installed tracker draws very little power, and most fleet trackers drop into a low power mode when the ignition is off. For machines that sit for weeks, we talk through the battery disconnect switch and the reporting the owner needs before wiring it.
Every major brand, including Geotab, Samsara, Motive, Verizon Connect, Azuga and Zonar. Pick the platform your fleet uses and we install it on your machines.
We install across Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Alabama, Florida and Mississippi, on site where the machines work. Call or text 803-513-1009.
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