Gas Prices

It has been one busy week. I have been super busy with calls with new customer leads as well as existing deals that are on the verge of closing. One of the reasons I have been so busy is that customers are seeing the benefit of asset and fleet management with the cost of gas going up. One benefit of our product is that we can monitor the speed of a vehicle. You may think that monitoring the speed of a vehicle is to much like big brother, but if you are a business owner with a fleet of vehicles and your employees have a heavy foot, they are costing you a lot of money. Of course there are lots of benefits to a company that installs a GPS systems, but this is what we are seeing today. Below is an article that was done by CNN that really explains why employers are looking to mange the speed of there fleets.
The facts presented are very sobering.

With gas prices rising, gas-saving advice abounds: Drive more gently, don't carry extra stuff in your trunk, combine your shopping trips.
This is all sound advice but there's one driving tip that will probably save you more gas than all the others, especially if you spend a lot of time on the highway: Slow down.

In a typical family sedan, every 10 miles per hour you drive over 60 is like the price of gasoline going up about 54 cents a gallon. That figure will be even higher for less fuel-efficient vehicles that go fewer miles on a gallon to start with.
The reason is as clear as the air around you.
When cruising on the highway, your car will be in its highest gear with the engine humming along at relatively low rpm's. All your car needs to do is maintain its speed by overcoming the combined friction of its own moving parts, the tires on the road surface and, most of all, the air flowing around, over and under it.
Pushing air around actually takes up about 40% of a car's energy at highway speeds, according to Roger Clark, a fuel economy engineer for General Motors.
Traveling faster makes the job even harder. More air builds up in front of the vehicle, and the low pressure "hole" trailing behind gets bigger, too. Together, these create an increasing suction that tends to pull back harder and harder the faster you drive. The increase is actually exponential, meaning wind resistance rises much more steeply between 70 and 80 mph than it does between 50 and 60.
Every 10 mph faster reduces fuel economy by about 4 mpg, a figure that remains fairly constant regardless of vehicle size, Clark said. (It might seem that a larger vehicle, with more aerodynamic drag, would see more of an impact. But larger vehicles also tend to have larger, more powerful engines that can more easily cope with the added load.)
That's where that 54 cents a gallon estimate comes from. If a car gets 28 mpg at 65 mph, driving it at 75 would drop that to 24 mpg. Fuel costs over 100 miles, for example - estimated at $3.25 a gallon - would increase by $1.93, or the cost of an additional 0.6 gallons of gas. That would be like paying 54 cents a gallon more for each of the 3.6 gallons used at 65 mph. That per-gallon price difference remains constant over any distance.
Engineers at Consumer Reports magazine tested this theory by driving a Toyota Camry sedan and a Mercury Mountaineer SUV at various set cruising speeds on a stretch of flat highway. Driving the Camry at 75 mph instead of 65 dropped fuel economy from 35 mpg to 30. For the Mountaineer, fuel economy dropped from 21 to 18.
Over the course of a 400-mile road trip, the Camry driver would spend about $6.19 more on gas at the higher speed and Mountaineer driver would spend an extra $10.32.
Driving even slower, say 55 mph, could save slightly more gas. In fact, the old national 55 mph speed limit, instituted in 1974, was a response to the period's energy crisis.
It was about more than just high gas prices, though. The crisis of the time involved literal gasoline shortages due to an international embargo. Gas stations were sometimes left with none to sell, and gas sales had to be rationed. The crisis passed, but the national 55 mph speed limit stayed on the books until the law was loosened in the 1980s. It was finally dropped altogether in 1995. (The law stuck around more because of an apparent safety benefit than for fuel saving.)
Despite today's high gas prices, don't expect to see a return to the national 55 mph speed limit. The law was unpopular in its day, and higher speeds have become so institutionalized that even the Environmental Protection Agency's fuel economy test cycle now includes speeds of up to 80 mph.
Driving 10 miles per hour faster, assuming you don't lose time getting pulled over for a speeding ticket, does have the advantage of getting you to your destination 50 minutes sooner on that 400 mile trip. Whether that time difference is worth the added cost and risk is, ultimately, up to you.
Copyrighted, CNNMoney. All Rights Reserved.

Interview with Alex

This will be a very quick blog. I wanted to give everyone a link to WallSt.net so you could listen to an interview that Alex Ensley did yesterday on the Green Grant that we are working on. Below is a link to the site, but you do have to sign up for an account but it is free.
Have a great weekend!

The link to the interview is HERE

Updates

I have been surfing the web for years. I am more of a geek than most people know. Today I bit the bullet and signed up for Googles AdWords. I don't know why I didn't do it sooner. For those of you who haven't done it, it was actually a very complicated process. However, I think it was worth the trouble. Googles AdWords is marketing service that Google offers that allows companies to market their products online using keywords. For example, we used keywords like "tracking, GPS Fleet Management, GPS devices and tracking products". I think that this, along with a few other ads that we are working on, will add a great deal to our sales efforts.

On to another note I just got off the phone with a customer that we sold in Charlotte last year. He was so excited about the Cyber Tracker I just had to share the news. This customer has about 30 devices on trucks. Last year one of his drivers fell very ill and was unable to contact their offices before being hospitalized. After not being able to reach him, the company used the Cyber Tracker to locate the vehicle and send a replacement driver to take over the critical load and make the delivery on time. He told me that it saved them an incredible amount of money, time and head ache and they would not have been able to do it with out the Cyber Tracker.

I love hearing success stories like this because it shows how powerful our products are and it also shows that tracking devices are not just a "big brother" tracking device. They are able to save companies money, time and help on gas costs by better routing.

More to come soon on GTT and other great up coming news!

New Developments with AT&T

Other than the snow today, this week has already started to be great! We have a lot of new and exciting projects coming up. I have been having some really good conference calls with AT&T over the last few weeks and I have to say I am extremely impressed on their organization. They really have their ducks in a row. The press release that came out today really shows the benefits to the Cyber Tracker in several ways. The new 700 mhz spectrum will give the Cyber Tracker the ability to have better “ in building” coverage which will expand the range of use for our products. Currently, most tracking devices have to have an eye to the sky to get an accurate reading. It will also provide the necessary bandwidth to give customers more audio and video options. This will be a great new way to provide new services to new and existing customers. We are all looking forward to the possibilities! I will try my best to keep this updated more as I have been falling a little behind.

HISS and GTT

For the last several months, we have been talking to Global Tracking Technologies about merger opportunities. I am very excited about the possibilities of adding GTT to our team. There is a lot of synergy between our two companies and we have similar business plans. A lot of details will be coming in the next few weeks, but I'll try to give as much here as I can.

GTT is a GPS software company that also carries several tracking devices. They are based in Tampa, Florida and have a strong presence in the Middle East and Africa. These are areas that HISS has had a great deal of success and with the possibility of using the GTT sales personnel located in that area, we can’t help but believe that it will add sales for both companies.

Will they replace our other software partners? Absolutely not! Just as there is no one tracking device that meets all customers needs, the same is true for software applications. We believe that by adding each others products and services we will have a stronger combined organization.

Over the next few weeks HISS and GTT will be doing due diligence. As that process unfolds, we will keep everyone as updated as possible. I look forward to providing you more information as it comes available.

Lets talk about Alex

Lets talk about Alex Ensley and his expanding role at HISS:

The press release that came out this morning was actually a result of an investor who introduced us to the NC Military Business Center. It just goes to show you that anything can help and although we get a lot of ideas from investors that fall short, this one was a winner! Alex is technically over logistics at HISS, but just as everyone else performs various roles in the company, Alex has been dealing with a contact who works for the North Carolina Military Business Center. Her job is to introduce NC based business’s to both NC State and Federal contracts. In addition, they help those businesses bid on contracts offered by both branches of government.

The approach to the project is two pronged. First, we have the opportunity to search for government contracts and bid on contracts when they become available using the above resources. Second, just because a bid is awarded to a particular company does not mean that we are out of the running for that particular project. By using this resource we have access to a database of recent government contracts that have been awarded. This database lists what company got the contract and by using this website we can contact those companies who were awarded the contracts. This gives us the opportunity to introduce our company and product line to them and possibly become a subcontractor for the winning proposal.

I asked Alex to summarize his thoughts on the program and he said the following :

“The overall scope of this opportunity is amazing. The contracts I have found recently vary greatly both in scope of products as well as price. For example, within 15 minutes of searching I found 7 applicable contracts, ranging in price from $2,500.00 to $700,000.00. In one day we were able to establish 18 contacts with businesses who were recently awarded government contracts. This is an extraordinary resource in several ways because not only does it help with sales, but it is also a great networking tool. It assists HISS in getting our business name out there and introduce our organization to other companies who might benefit from the use of our products in their pursuit of government contracts.”

All in All it is a very cool program and I think in the long run it will go a long way to help the company meet and exceed its sales goals. It also goes to show you that networking is a very powerful tool. Hats off to the investor that turned us on to this program!

First Big sale of the CT410

Today we announced that HISS had made its first significant sale of the CT-410! Closing the first significant sale is great news for HISS. We have had smaller sales with the 410 and 150 but this one has some legs. We need to be clear that in no way is the 410 replacing the original Cyber Tracker. Instead, by expanding our product offering, it is helping the company make sales that were being missed because the CT 1000 was more product than the customer could use.

This may be a good time to explain the differences in the three levels of products. The CT1000 has the capability to provide the end user with voice communication, tracking and tons of monitoring capabilities. The CT1000 sets itself above the competition by being able to integrate with other equipment and devices due to its linux operating system.

The CT410, the little brother to the CT 1000, can provide tracking and very basic monitoring capabilities. The CT410 does not have a operating system on it so it is limited on where it can be integrated. However it is still a powerful and robust system. The advantage it has over the 1000 is that it is operating on GSM, iDen and CDMA networks where the 1000 is only operating on GSM and iDen.

Finally, the CT150 is basically a dumb box. It has the ability to track an asset and transmit the data. It is perfect for fleets who just want a tracking application. The low cost of the CT150 makes it very attractive to customers. As you can see, our product line now covers almost every tracking and data transmission scenario.