It was a cold morning in Apple Valley, California. It was so cold that the foreman for Arizona Pipeline decided to warm up his truck before heading to work. He started the engine, went back into the house to get his lunch, and returned to find…an empty driveway. He watched as his work truck drove away down the street, loaded with equipment for the day’s work.

Neil Christensen is the Compliance and Transportation Manager for Arizona Pipeline. Based in Hesperia, California, the company operates across the southwestern United States, Oregon and Washington. He oversees a fleet of over 500 vehicles.  That morning he received the call they were one short.

“The driver called the police,” said Christensen. “Then he called me. We were looking at a potential loss of $40 – $45,000.”

But what Christensen did next made the difference between filing a theft insurance claim and all the accompanying red tape and paperwork, and conducting business as usual.

“I went to our Fleet Manager console,” continued Christensen. “I located the vehicle parked in a cul-de-saq not far from where it was taken. Then I called the police with the location.”

The police found the vehicle intact with all of the equipment. It was returned to Arizona Pipeline within an hour.

“We started installing the tracking devices on our vehicles last August and so far we can track over 400 of them,” added Christensen. “Our goal is to have a device on every one of our 537 units.”

This isn’t the first time Fleet Manager has been able to recover stolen vehicles for Arizona Pipeline.

“We had two pickup trucks stolen in Las Vegas not long after the devices were installed,” said Christensen. “They were also recovered intact.”

While theft prevention is a major benefit of Fleet Manager, Christensen uses it for other things as well.

“We do a lot of driver safety stuff. I send the Driver Safety reports to the divisions and our Risk Management supervisor each month.”

Christensen says Arizona Pipeline also uses the system to keep track of their vehicles on job sites and to monitor vehicle speeds. And because they operate in multiple states, they are implementing Fleet Manager’s state fuel tax reporting capabilities.

So what does Christensen think of his Fleet Manager system?

“At this point I’m real pleased with it.”