Running 50 trucks for regional distribution. Been through four different tracking systems in two years. Finally have something that works. **Attempt 1: Consumer GPS trackers** Bought cheap GPS trackers off Amazon and plugged into OBD ports. Seemed smart until they started failing after 3 months with no API access, terrible web interface, complete waste. **Attempt 2: Enterprise fleet solution** Signed up with big name fleet tracking company. $500/truck/month. Beautiful dashboards nobody used, drivers hated the surveillance aspect. Overkill for our needs. **Attempt 3: Build everything in-house** Tried building our own with Raspberry Pis and cellular modems. Spent 6 months on it. Worked sometimes. Maintenance nightmare. Drivers kept "accidentally" unplugging them. **Attempt 4: Hybrid approach** Simple smartphone app for drivers. Just tracks location when they're on shift. Sends to our self-hosted backend. Using radar's API for geofencing delivery locations. Automatic arrival/departure detection. No manual input needed. PostgreSQL with PostGIS for data storage. Basic React dashboard for dispatchers. Customer gets SMS with tracking link. **Why this works:** * Drivers already have smartphones * No hardware to maintain * Automatic arrival detection prevents lying * Customers love real-time tracking * Costs $160/month total vs $25k/month for enterprise solution **Technical challenges we solved:** Battery drain: Only track every 30 seconds. Sufficient accuracy without killing phones. GPS drift: 100-meter geofences instead of 50. Eliminates false positives. Driver privacy: Tracking only during shifts. They control when it starts/stops. Scale: PostgreSQL handles our 100k daily location points easily. **Other unexpected benefits:** Drivers actually prefer it. Protects them from false delivery claims. Customer service calls down 60%. They can see where trucks are. Route optimization emerged naturally from the data. Sometimes the simple solution beats the enterprise solution. Sometimes a smartphone beats dedicated hardware. Sometimes less surveillance creates more trust.