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By Greg Bartlett

Last year, Somali pirates hijacked an oil tanker the size of an aircraft carrier. The ship was carrying 2 million barrels of crude oil – more than a quarter of the total oil Saudi Arabia produces in a day. For several months, the ship was docked in a port used by the pirates until they were able to get a ransom. The bad news was that the pirates were well-equipped with speed boats, advanced weapons systems and GPS tracking. The good news was that the ship also had GPS tracking. Naval authorities knew where the ship was at all times even though the pirates had been able to elude them with other ships in the past.

GPS & Oil Tankers

It’s doubtful that you’ll be sending any ships out in the near future, more doubtful that they’ll be the size of the Sirius Star, and even more doubtful that they’ll be hijacked by Somali pirates! If you did own such a ship, you probably would have bought a GPS tracking device a long time ago. You can be sure the other ship owners did after this bit of news!

But it’s quite likely that you own a car or maybe even a boat. It’s also quite possible that one of those items could be stolen. And it’s absolutely certain that if they were, you would be wanting a way to track where they went. That would make for a good dinner party conversation: how shocked you were to walk out to the driveway and see that your car was gone; how relieved you felt when you remembered the device you had hidden under the spare tire; how amazing it was to see it appear on a map; how quickly the police responded and how shocked the thieves were to see them arrive.

If you’re planning to ship 2 million barrels of crude oil in the next few days, you’ll definitely want to consider a GPS tracking device, but most of us probably aren’t going to do that in the near future. Just as well, you might want the same kind of protection for your car. You can be sure that the Somali pirates regretted the foresight of the owners of the Sirius Star. You can be just as sure that anyone who took your car would regret your foresight too. in either case, a GPS tracking device is a small investment to make in protecting much larger assets.