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ISR FleetTrack Sniffs Out Worker Scam at Georgia Sanitation Company All-Cycle Avoids Loss of Truck, Containers and Tipping Fees, Totaling Over $140,000 Early one Saturday morning last May, Anthony Grutadaurio, co-owner of All-Cycle Sanitation of Woodstock, Ga., walked into his office, flipped on his computer monitor to view the whereabouts of his trucks and noticed something unusual: a truck that should have been parked was on the move. Grutadaurio called the dispatcher to find out if the truck had been put on the road, only to learn that it had not. Concerned, Grutadaurio opened the truck's travel data report recorded by the FleetTrack Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) system from Integrated Systems Research (ISR) of Englewood Cliffs, N.J. A review of the truck's recent activity showed that it had been moving during off hours between a sanitation facility where All-Cycle dumps client refuse and a non-customer construction site. Grutadaurio's partner, Barry Skolnick, quickly got in a car and trailed the truck, using the ISR FleetTrack system to guide him. Skolnick eventually caught up with the truck and followed it until police arrived to arrest the driver on a theft charge. The case is pending in the courts, according to Skolnick who is also All-Cycle's lawyer. The ISR FleetTrack system consists of a silent position monitor installed in each company vehicle. It enables communication between truck driver and dispatcher through a wireless network. ISR FleetTrack continuously records data in real-time of a truck's operation, including speed and location. It notifies dispatchers when a truck deviates from a planned route, leaves a specific zone or is standing still for more than 15 minutes or any other pre-set time. Historic data can be played back on demand. All-Cycle's system can also reprint a detailed "bread crumb" map that shows its trucks' locations in five-minute increments. All-Cycle installed the ISR FleetTrack system because drivers take the trucks home at night in order to get an early start on collection routes that begin before daybreak. "The police were impressed with how well ISR FleetTrack really works," said Skolnick. "Without ISR FleetTrack, we would have never uncovered the scam." "The system did all the leg work,'' said Todd Henderson, the Cobb County Police Department (Marrietta, Ga.) officer who arrested the truck driver. "They were able to tell exactly where the truck was. If I had a business and vehicles on the road, I would have a FleetTrack system," he said. Further adding to the case, Skolnick said, was a curious call the company received the day before from an irate resident who complained that an All-Cycle truck had dumped a container of refuse on his street. The refuse belonged to an All-Cycle construction site customer. All-Cycle assigned workers to collect the load and deposit it in a landfill. Upon reviewing ISR FleetTrack historical data, All-Cycle determined that the same larcenous driver was responsible for dumping the refuse. Since all disposals at the sanitation facility are ticketed back to All-Cycle, the company believes the driver was allegedly paid by the non-customer to dump its material at the landfill. All-Cycle executives theorize that to avoid detectionóand additional billingóthe driver allegedly dumped their customer's refuse on the streets of Fulton and Cobb counties. Using ISR FleetTrack's recorded data, the company was also able to determine the non-customer's location. There, the company discovered six of its new 40-yard capacity containers filled with debris. Because empty containers are housed at the refuse facility, the truck driver had easy access to the units. "Without the ISR FleetTrack system, All-Cycle may have never recovered its six 40-yard containers worth $25,000 and a $115,000 roll-off truck," said Skolnick. "In addition, the company could have been charged an estimated $1,500 in tipping fees. Fortunately, the full containers never made it to the landfill. The refuse was left at the construction site and the empty containers were carted back to All-Cycle's storage area. In the end, ISR FleetTrack saved All-Cycle over $140,000. |