Email

By Greg Bartlett

Large salvage companies can grow rapidly. In a bid to keep their operations ecologically friendly, they often provide not only a vehicle disposal service, but also a used parts reclamation service. So, someone who requires a new wing mirror for his particular make of car can go along and find one at the salvage company. But how do they keep track of their stock on many acres of waste ground? There are so many new cars of each make and model, and also, all the wrecked cars may not have all the same parts. It is a terrible headache for all concerned.

GPS tracking services are a good way of locating the position of anything on the planet. Traditionally it is the object such as the person in the car who wants to know where they are, but it is also a good way of finding the location of something. If there is something which emits a signal, then the sensors can pick that up and locate its position using the GPS technology.

Carsalvage is a fast growing salvage and spare parts company. The credit crunch had driven many users of larger cars off the roads and for some, it was just better to trash them rather than to try and sell them on. So Carsalvage grew quite rapidly in a short space of time. But then the headaches began. They process between ten and fifteen thousand cars per year and keeping track of all those cars and components was taking many hundreds of man hours and therefore costing several thousands of dollars – a real waste of time and money.

A new type of tracking service was called for and a local engineering company stepped up to the challenge. Using radio frequency identification and GPS car tracking device technology, they devised a system to identify the cars and components, including information about the make of the car and type of part and also the location of the car within the huge site itself.

This technology greatly improved their service. A lot of time was saved whereas before, simply the tracking and location of each car and parts was a logistical nightmare. Now, the parts themselves sit passively giving out information about what they are and where they are located. A lot of time and thousands of dollars have been saved and the company is now looking at rolling their system out to other companies.