JANUARY 14, 2026 | ARTICLE
Fleet telematics - the new competitive advantage in construction
In the aggressive construction market, fleet telematics delivers a vital competitive advantage, fortifying both project bidding and execution. Most construction fleets are not outfitted with telematics, and many do not even have basic GPS tracking. This technology gap presents an immediate opportunity to leverage construction telematics to gain an edge on the competition.
The potential for return on investment from telematics in construction is perhaps the greatest appeal of this vital tool. Construction telematics has the potential to provide ROI by reducing the costs of fuel, maintenance, insurance premiums and deductibles, as well as minimizing vehicle downtime, optimizing fleet management, and enabling your team to get the job done faster and more efficiently for your clients. And beyond ROI, telematics potentially empowers you to achieve a level of safety for your crew that cannot be calculated in dollars.
In this article, we’ll consider the challenges facing construction vehicle fleets, demonstrate how onboard telematics present a valuable solution, and reveal how OnStar One Fleet represents an untapped potential for any construction fleet of GM vehicles.
Solving today's construction fleet challenges with telematics
Fighting theft with telematics
Vehicle, tool and equipment theft costs the construction industry hundreds of millions of dollars annually, eating directly into profits. High-value equipment worth thousands of dollars — such as toolboxes, power tools, power takeoff systems, and auxiliary generators — as well as the vehicles themselves, are all prime targets for theft.
The National Insurance Crime Bureau estimates the losses total from $300 million to $1 billion annually, with a 20% chance of recovery. “These losses are only for the machinery itself,” according to CONEXPO-CON/AGG, the largest construction conference in North America. “As a contractor, stolen construction equipment is also likely to result in downtime on the job, project delays, higher insurance premiums and a costly deductible. Your insurance coverage could be dropped altogether. Instead of hoping your business won’t be a victim, a better approach is to be proactive about preventing construction equipment theft.”
Unfortunately, most fleet managers lack real-time visibility into vehicle locations across multiple job sites, leaving them unable to quickly identify and respond to theft or unauthorized use of vehicles.
Construction fleet telematics is designed to help protect vehicles and equipment with the following capabilities:
- Vehicle Location:
Telematics provides real-time visibility into vehicle location at any time, as well as route history, to help identify any unscheduled or unknown after-hours movement.
- Geofencing Alerts:
The top telematics systems enable you to set customized geofencing boundaries. OnStar One Fleet will send immediate alerts when vehicles move outside customized geofenced operating areas, potentially an early sign of possible theft or unauthorized use.
- Stolen Vehicle Assistance:
Fleet telematics can be used to assist law enforcement in vehicle recovery. For example, OnStar Advisors are available 24/7 to help authorities, providing them with the vehicle's location, speed, and direction of travel. In addition, at law enforcement's request, OnStar can remotely slow a vehicle to an idle speed of 3-5 mph, improving the chance for vehicle recovery.
- Drive Block:
Using telematics, a fleet manager can remotely disable a vehicle to prevent it from starting with the push of a button.
The bottom line
Telematics features for vehicle location and recovery yield substantial ROI, potentially covering the cost of OnStar One Fleet.
Supporting driver safety with telematics
Safety is imperative in construction, an industry that faces one of the highest rates for transportation-related fatalities. “The second most common source of fatal occupational injuries among construction workers, accounting for just over a quarter of on-the-job deaths from 2011 to 2023, are transportation incidents,” according to the Center for Construction Research and Training.
Meanwhile, most construction fleet managers are hampered by limited visibility into driver behavior across multiple job sites, making workers more vulnerable to transportation-related injuries and fatalities, as well as exposing companies to significant liability from vehicle incidents.
Construction fleet telematics offer the following capabilities relating to vehicle safety:
- Automatic Crash Response and Notifications:
When seconds matter, especially at remote job sites, telematics can automatically detect a vehicle crash. With OnStar One Fleet, OnStar Advisors respond immediately, contacting emergency services and communicating with the driver to assess the situation. Emergency-Certified Advisors, trained in Emergency Medical Dispatch (EMD), administer critical support as needed until help arrives.
Even if the driver is not responsive, OnStar Advisors provide First Responders with the essential details such as vehicle location, airbag deployment status, speed and direction of impact. OnStar Advisors also assess the likelihood of serious injuries using Injury Severity Prediction (ISP) analytics.
- Crisis Assist:
Fleet telematics can provide vital guidance such as routing assistance to help drivers avoid dangers including severe weather, natural and man-made disasters, accidents and other hazards.
- In-Vehicle Coaching:
A proactive approach to safety, in-vehicle coaching is a tool designed to help improve driving safety. For example, OnStar enables fleet managers to identify risky behaviors; provides real-time audio warnings about safety risks such as speeding, hard braking, hard acceleration and seat belt usage; and builds driver safety awareness to encourage proper driving habits.
- Basic Driver Behavior Monitoring:
Telematics can also provide driver scoring and ranking based on safety data, helping to identify problematic driver behaviors.
The bottom line
Telematics can contribute significantly to ROI by providing tools to help reduce incidents and related costs such as workers' compensation claims and insurance premiums. But the most important advantage of these features is the safety and well-being of your dedicated and hard-working construction crew.
OnStar has been protecting construction crews for over 25 years with proven technology deployed on the most demanding job sites. Your GM vehicles already feature built-in Automatic Crash Response — why take chances with safety when these indispensable tools are already pre-installed on your fleet?
Reducing downtime with telematics
The high-mileage demands and harsh environments of construction accelerate component wear and increase breakdown risk. Fleet managers struggle to minimize vehicle downtime and maintenance-related delays — and, when crews cannot get to job sites, downtime can translate into missed deadlines, increased project costs, lost revenue, and damaged client relationships.
While juggling a range of priorities — from schedules to budgets — most fleet managers are forced to operate in a day-to-day reactive mode. “Breakdown Maintenance” means waiting until parts fail. Whether it's a dead battery, faulty alternator, failing fuel pump, clogged fuel filter, or a myriad of other causes, the vehicle is stopped dead by the roadside, and unplanned downtime brings the project to a halt at just the wrong time. This is a costly, time-consuming and inefficient approach to vehicle maintenance. In this mode, the fleet is running you, when you should be running the fleet.
Construction fleet telematics can enable proactive vehicle maintenance with the following capabilities:
- Vehicle Health Alerts:
The right telematics solution will utilize advanced analytics to accurately predict when maintenance is needed, enabling you to schedule vehicle service around projects rather than dealing with emergency breakdowns. Telematics can present real-time diagnostic data direct from your fleet via proactive notifications on vehicle health — from oil, air filters and fuel pumps to batteries, brake pads and tires — so you can predict and prevent issues that lead to downtime. With OnStar, every mile is monitored for potential maintenance needs.
- Roadside Assistance:
Telematics can support 24/7 roadside assistance, getting your vehicles back on the road, and your projects back on schedule.
The bottom line
Optimizing fleet performance
Pickup trucks and vans make construction projects possible, transporting crews, tools and equipment across multiple job sites on a daily basis. This fleet must be managed properly to ensure it serves as a competitive advantage for construction operations, rather than a liability.
Productivity and efficiency drive your team to get the job done on time and on budget, but most fleet managers are constrained by a lack of visibility into actual vehicle utilization and performance, and many even lack basic fleet tracking. You need to know where your vehicles are at all times.
Fuel is one of the top considerations for fleet cost-effectiveness. Traffic, routes, driving behaviors and idling all impact fuel usage. For example, according to the EPA, pickup trucks and vans use almost three quarters of a gallon for every hour spent idling. Wasting fuel is like burning money. With 25% to 50% of your fleet's budget going toward fuel, this is an ideal area to reduce costs.
Assets and time are wasted as vehicles sit idle when they could be productive. Idling too long not only results in higher fuel consumption, but also reduced productivity, engine wear and greater overall operating costs.
Construction fleet telematics can empower you to optimize fleet operations with the following capabilities:
- Vehicle Location and Trip History:
Real-time GPS tracking, geofencing alerts, and trip history provide deep visibility into vehicle utilization across multiple construction sites. With OnStar One Fleet, you can identify underused assets and make the right decisions to maximize productivity.
- Vehicle Idle Time:
Tracking a vehicle's idle time and comparing it to the range driven enables you to gauge vehicle usage and driver efficiency.
- Turn by Turn Navigation:
By choosing the most efficient route, guided by telematics, fleets save time and fuel.
- Fueling and Charging Data:
Telematics can provide vehicle fuel level or electric charge status to ensure your fleet is ready for the road ahead.
- Expense Management:
Using a comprehensive telematics solution, fleet managers can manage maintenance costs, fuel usage, EV charging and reimbursements all in one platform.
- Built-in Wi-Fi Hotspot:
Connectivity is the key to team communication. The OnStar Wi-Fi® hotspot supports up to seven devices, keeping crews connected even at remote job sites.
The bottom line
By leveraging your fleet's data, you can improve efficiency and performance. Telematics transforms your construction fleet from a cost center to a revenue accelerator with actionable insights that enable smarter equipment management decisions and more effective fleet operations.
In terms of ROI, telematics offers substantial fuel savings for construction fleets. OnStar One Fleet potentially costs less than the fuel you save through vehicle idle time monitoring and route optimization alone.
Easy deployment across your fleet
Telematics can solve a range of construction fleet challenges, but the value is diminished when the technology requires complex installation, integration and configuration, putting your fleet out of commission for days on end.
Maybe the most compelling differentiator for OnStar One Fleet, compared with other telematics solutions, is that this powerful technology is already factory installed on your fleet of GM vehicles. The first major step, and probably the hardest part of telematics, is already done. No additional hardware investment or installation, no disruption of fleet activities. This valuable, multi-faceted tool is just waiting to be used. Equipping your construction fleet with professional-grade telematics is as simple as activating a subscription.
Once activated, you can immediately unlock the full potential of advanced telematics delivering instant insights.
Utilizing OnStar is just as easy. Consolidating safety, tracking, diagnostics, and driver management into a single platform, OnStar features an intuitive dashboard designed for construction managers — not IT specialists. No tech skills are required. In addition, the OnStar Vehicle Insights app and web portal are user-friendly and require minimal training.
OnStar can even scale easily into non-GM vehicles via the fleet adapter and seamlessly integrate with existing fleet management systems via the OnStar API.
Concluding thoughts – Unlock the potential of built-in construction fleet telematics
While many construction companies seek greater visibility into fleet safety, maintenance and performance, they often do not realize that their GM vehicles are already equipped with embedded OnStar hardware that can deliver the insight they need. It's simply a matter of activating this powerful tool.
