What HGV tracking costs, and what to check before you buy

If you are comparing specific products, our guide to the best HGV GPS tracking systems goes through them one by one. This page is the other half of the decision: what separates a truck system from a car one, and what it costs.

Search for HGV tracking and most of what comes back is van tracking with a photograph of a truck on it. The map looks the same, the app looks the same, and then you discover it cannot download a tachograph or read anything off the vehicle's CAN bus. Here is what genuinely separates a truck system from a car one, and what it costs.

1. Remote tachograph download, or it is not an HGV system

If you run vehicles over 3.5 tonnes you are legally required to download driver cards every 28 days and vehicle units every 90. Doing it by hand means someone walking to each truck with a download key, and it means the download does not happen when the truck is away.

A proper HGV tracker pulls both files over the air on a schedule. That is the single biggest difference in day-to-day work, and it is what the DVSA will ask about. Miss the downloads and you are exposed on your OCRS score and your operator licence — we go into the detail in what happens when a tacho download is missed.

Worth knowing: remote download needs the right cable as well as the right tracker. The tracker connects to the tachograph through a dedicated lead, so budget for it rather than being surprised by it.

2. CAN and FMS data, not just GPS

A car tracker tells you where the vehicle went. A truck tracker tells you what it was doing: fuel consumption from the vehicle's own sender, engine hours, PTO engagement, axle weight on vehicles that report it, AdBlue level, and fault codes before they become roadside defects.

That comes off the FMS or J1939 bus, which means the tracker needs the interfaces for it. The Teltonika FMC650 at £79.99 inc VAT carries two CAN interfaces with J1939 and J1708, two RS232 ports, RS485, 1-Wire and USB, plus four digital inputs, four digital outputs and four analog inputs. That is what lets one unit handle the tachograph, the fuel sender, a temperature probe for the fridge and a driver ID reader at the same time.

It is also built for a truck rather than a car: 8–32 V supply so it copes with 24 V systems, dual-band L1/L5 satellite reception for accuracy under bridges and in yards, dual SIM or eSIM, and an operating range of −40°C to +85°C.

3. Trailers counted as well as tractors

A tracked tractor unit and an untracked trailer gives you half a picture. Trailers need battery-powered units because there is nothing to wire into, which means the useful specification is battery life and weatherproofing rather than CAN interfaces.

The Teltonika FMC234 at £29.98 inc VAT is IP67 rated with a 1000 mAh battery, three digital inputs and three digital outputs, which covers most trailer and plant work. Put both on the same platform and the yard finally matches the paperwork.

What it actually costs

There are two numbers, and vendors who quote only one are hiding the other.

  • Hardware, once. An HGV-grade tracker is £79.99 inc VAT; a trailer unit is £29.98. Fitting is extra and usually an hour or two per vehicle.
  • Platform, monthly. Fleetalyse subscriptions start at £5.99 per device a month including VAT, with HGV Pro at £11.99 for the tachograph and compliance workflows. Full API access is included on every tier rather than sold as an add-on.

Watch for three-year minimum terms, per-report charges, and API access priced separately — those are where an apparently cheap quote becomes an expensive one.

You may not need to buy hardware at all

If your trucks already have trackers and the problem is the platform behind them, you can usually keep the hardware. Fleetalyse supports hundreds of tracker models from most major manufacturers, so switching platform does not have to mean re-fitting the fleet. Search your model on the supported devices list, or read how bring your own device works.

A short buying checklist

  • Does it download driver cards and vehicle units remotely, on a schedule?
  • Does it report infringements against DVSA rules, or just store files?
  • Does it read CAN/FMS data, or only GPS position?
  • Can it track trailers and plant on the same screen?
  • Is API access included, and can you export your own data?
  • What is the contract term, and what happens to the hardware if you leave?

If a supplier cannot answer all six in one email, that is the answer.