Tracking trade.

• Author: Burns, Claire
• Position: Global Positioning System - Editorial

GPS technology gives businesses smart tracking know-how As you sit in your temperature-controlled, oxygen-rich environment reading this magazine, thousands of satellites zoom around the planet through cold space. Each satellite has a very specific orbit, and each one is performing a duty for someone on earth--an individual, a small business, a government or a corporation. While satellites are nothing new, the tasks they are now employed to perform sometimes are. Many of these satellites have become tracking devices at an amazing rate, asked to observe and report the movement of all types of objects.

Are you being tracked right now? You might respond by looking out the window to see if a stranger is sitting in a parked car staring at you with binoculars. Those were the good old days. Now, you should be checking your car or cell phone for a tiny GPS system. If there truly is a satellite with your name on it, your exact latitude and longitude is being fed into a system that is capable of mapping your every move on a web site.

While there are many possibilities for privacy invasion (Wired magazine recently ran an article titled "Spying on Snookums with GPS"), businesses have been reaping the rewards of satellite tracking systems for years. But GPS and earth-based-tracking systems have quickly become more affordable and user-friendly, which means they are everywhere. Even the least tech-savvy person in a meeting shouldn't flinch at the mention of coordinates and real-time mapping strategies.

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Here in Utah, England Trucking works with one of the innovators in the industry, Qualcomm, to track its fleet of 2,700 trucks. While England has been around since 1920, they're now running over a million miles a day on all their trucks combined, and without such a comprehensive, reliable tracking system, England would have a difficult time. "I don't know what we'd do without it," says equipment manager Craig Brown.

If the Utah office needs information about one particular truck, they can instantly find its exact location, speed, previous route, departure time from any starting point and estimated arrival time at a destination. It's a system that can enforce quality control in an instant, even with an errant driver.

"The system can tell us if a truck is out of route or off track and a message instantly goes to the driver," Brown says. Through a small transmitter on the back of each truck, the Salt Lake offices can communicate with each...