Alarm.com Connected Fleet: Track Your Trucks on the Same Platform as Your Alarm

If you run service trucks, you already know the questions: where is unit 3 right now, who was speeding on I-15 this morning, why is the Transit burning more fuel than the others, and did anyone move a van out of the yard at 2 a.m. Alarm.com Connected Fleet answers all of them from the same app and dashboard your business already uses for its alarm, cameras and door access. A Car Connector plugs into each vehicle’s OBD-II port, reports over cellular, and the fleet shows up next to your buildings. Here is what it tracks, how it installs, and why putting it on the security platform instead of a separate fleet service is the point.

What Connected Fleet is

Alarm.com describes it as “a cloud-based fleet management system” that “provides real-time fleet data to optimize productivity, reduce vehicle costs, and generate data-driven actionable business insights.” The hardware is the ADC-CC100 Car Connector, a small cellular device that plugs into the vehicle’s OBD-II diagnostic port, the same port a mechanic uses. It reads the vehicle’s own data (speed, fuel, trouble codes, battery) and adds GPS, and sends it to your Alarm.com account. Nothing is wired, nothing is drilled, and a truck can be added or moved between units in the time it takes to find the port.

What you see

Location and trips

Every vehicle on a map in real time, with a last-known location when it is parked. Fleet Trip Reports break each day down by trip: start and end time, duration, distance, fuel consumed, maximum speed and a driver-behavior summary. You can pull them on demand or have them emailed daily, weekly or monthly, which is how most owners actually use them: a Monday-morning email instead of a dashboard they have to remember to open.

Driver behavior

Alerts for excessive speed, hard braking and sudden acceleration, by vehicle and time. Alarm.com’s own example is the one every owner recognizes: “Excessive Speed Alert: Vehicle 6 exceeded 65 mph.” It is not about catching people; it is about having the conversation with data instead of hearsay, and about insurance.

Fuel

Fuel level per vehicle and consumption over time, with low-fuel notifications. Across a fleet, the consumption view is where the money shows up: the truck that idles, the route that doubles back, the driver who fills up twice as often.

Vehicle health

Diagnostic Trouble Codes as they appear, so the check-engine light is in your inbox before the driver mentions it; low battery warnings; and unexpected movement when a vehicle moves while it should be parked, which is the security feature in a fleet product.

Geofences and notifications

Draw a geofence around the yard, the job site or the county line and get a notification when a vehicle crosses it. Combined with unexpected-movement alerts, that is how a landscaper in Lehi knows a trailer left the lot on a Sunday, and how a plumbing company knows a van arrived at the customer’s address when the customer says it did not.

Why it belongs on the security platform

There are dedicated fleet trackers. The argument for Connected Fleet is the one Alarm.com makes with its platform diagram: access, intrusion, video, fleet, gunshot detection, energy, one app, one enterprise dashboard. For a business we already protect, that means the owner who gets the back-door alarm, the camera clip and the door-access log also gets the fleet alert, in the same place, under the same login, with the same user permissions. Managers see their location; the owner sees all of them. And it means one vendor is accountable: us.

It also scales the way the rest of the platform does: Alarm.com rates it for up to 100 vehicles per location and thousands of locations per customer, so a two-truck HVAC company and a regional contractor use the same product.

How we set it up

1. Count the vehicles and locations. Each vehicle gets a Car Connector and a service plan; each location gets a dashboard; the enterprise view sits on top.
2. Plug in. We can do it in your yard in an afternoon, or ship the connectors with a one-page sheet and your drivers do it at the next fill-up. The device reports as soon as the vehicle starts.
3. Name, group, geofence. Vehicles get real names, not VINs; locations get geofences; alert thresholds get set to what you care about.
4. Schedule the reports. Weekly trip reports to the owner, daily to dispatch if you want them.
5. Tie it to the rest. If the yard has Alarm.com cameras, an unexpected-movement alert at 2 a.m. and the gate camera clip arrive together.

Frequently asked

Does it work on any vehicle? Any vehicle with a standard OBD-II port, which is nearly everything sold in the US since 1996. We confirm the port location and clearance on older or unusual vehicles.

Does it need the vehicle’s Wi-Fi or the driver’s phone? No. The Car Connector has its own cellular connection, so it reports wherever there is coverage, independent of the driver.

Can drivers unplug it? They can, and the system tells you when a device goes offline. In practice the port is under the dash and the device is unobtrusive; most companies simply make it policy.

Is it a monthly cost? Yes, per vehicle, on your Alarm.com for Business account alongside your other services. We quote it per fleet.

Can I use it without an Alarm.com security system? It runs on an Alarm.com for Business account; most of our fleet customers already have one for their building, and the value is highest when it is all in one place.

Who sees what? Alarm.com’s enterprise permissions apply: a location manager sees that location’s vehicles; the owner sees everything.

Talk to us about Connected Fleet →

Shield Low Voltage is an Alarm.com for Business dealer serving Utah County, Salt Lake County and the Wasatch Back. Product details are from Alarm.com’s Connected Fleet product summary (ADC-CC100) and brochure; images and video courtesy of Alarm.com.