Only when you have to manage fleet drivers do you realise that it can be quite difficult to keep track of their movements, yet they are in control of a lot.

The vehicles they are driving and the cargo they are transporting could be worth millions.

This difficulty was one of the first discoveries Brian Otieno made as BoxLeo, the courier and logistics company he founded in 2019, continued to grow beyond Kenya. From starting out with an initial two motorcycles, the company now has 30 motorcycles and 15 trucks.

“15 trucks are not things you are going to monitor one by one,” he says.

Luckily for Brian, the Internet of Things has a solution in the form of telematics, where a sim card is placed in a tracker which is then placed in a vehicle and using GPS technology, one can then remotely monitor what drivers and cars are doing on the road.

Telematics is one of the solutions Safaricom offers SMEs as it seeks to bring technology closer to businesses to help solve some of their persistent problems.

“Through such things as geo-routing, we are able to actually monitor the route the drivers are going to. We’ve also been able to monitor the speeds at which they drive these trucks at. This has really gone a long way in helping us work more efficiently, save on fuel and we are now able to deliver our products to the end-users on time,” explains Brian.

BoxLeo seeks to be a big player in the transporting of fast-moving consumer goods in East Africa and the hope is that the efficiencies gotten from the use of the telematics solution will eventually trickle down to the end-customers in terms of lower cost and speedy deliveries.

Watch the video below to learn more from BoxLeo.