Until now, telematics was considered just another operational expense — but across fleets, the wheels have turned. For companies like RailWorks and Lazer Logistics, telematics is driving new business opportunities.
During the “Driving ROI with Insights and Integrations” panel held in Las Vegas as part of the Geotab Connect 2026 conference, the two companies detailed how their partnership with Geotab helped revolutionise their fleets with new insights, and how telematics use evolved from safety to business edge.
Value driver
Lazer Logistics, a trucking operator in the US, has partnered with Geotab since 2017, and is using insights generated from GO devices to build and maintain customer trust.
“What we do is mainly yard operations. After an over-the-road trip brings the trailer to the gate at a distribution centre, we take over from there, and we manage the operations within the yard – where that trailer needs to go in the lot, and then at what point it needs to be brought to the dock door, loaded, unloaded, or driven back to the lot – and then an OTR driver will come and pick it up and drive it away again,” Tom Wolfenden, VP of Enterprise Architecture, Data and AI, Lazer Logistics, explained.
Using data generated from the GO devices, Lazer Logistics is able to provide its customers visibility into their yard operations.
“When we sign contracts with our customers, we are obliged to keep X number of day cabs at all times and keep them operational,” Wolfenden said, pertaining to heavy duty trucks without a sleeper cabin.
“Geotab knows which of those vehicles are within those (geographic) zones. Since we are also getting all the telematics data from Geotab, we can do lane density reports showing where the vehicles were moving around in the yard, heat maps, and things like that, so it’s all great information for the customers that helps us retain and win those contracts,” he added.
Additionally, Lazer Logistics was able to adopt an idle vehicle reduction policy, and has since reduced its carbon emission by 135 million pounds of carbon dioxide.
Meanwhile, RailWorks saved US$1 million year-over-year in 2025 due to the predictive maintenance powered by insights from Geotab.
“The most important aspect of our business are the employees on the ground, and it’s important for them to be able to get the data and understand the data very quickly as a usable product, because they can figure out very quickly that when that vehicle is not running, they cannot make money,” noted Jason Wolterman, Fleet Safety Compliance Director, RailWorks.
Advanced integrations
About a year ago, Lazer Logistics set out to eliminate data silos in its operations. Its enterprise data layer, Wolfenden said, goes out and gets information data from all of their systems across the entire enterprise, and brings them into one centralised location, or a single pane of glass.
“We used a product called Microsoft Fabric, which is a unified set of tools that allow you to conduct data acquisition, data storage, and data science, as well as the analytics and reporting. Power BI is actually now part of the Microsoft Fabric suite of products. We use Microsoft Fabric to get Geotab data into that ecosystem. We use the data connector, so all data calls or API calls go to the data connector, which is highly useful pre-formatted information that’s already aggregated to daily KPIs and monthly KPIs. Of course, we also use the suite of APIs from Geotab,” the executive said.
Recently, the logistics firm embarked on a project with Geotab using the latter’s cloud data connector. Within Microsoft Fabric are what’s called event hubs or event streams, which is where Geotab pushes the data to Lazer Logistics in real-time. By creating an endpoint in Fabric and telling Geotab what it is, then the data starts flowing through.
“One of the nice things about that is you can then build machine learning models and look for anomalies and things like that in the data in real-time, and then drive workflows downstream from there. We use a Medallion architecture, so the data goes through gold, silver, and bronze layers, and then we use traditional Kimball dimensional models, so star schemas and snowflake schemas, and what that allows us to do is create what they call a domain-agnostic dimension of information,” Wolfenden elaborated.
Indeed, data silos continue to be a major roadblock for fleets that want to unlock more value out of their data, noted Tucker Peebles, Lead Software Developer for BlueArrow, a Geotab partner.
“When you start using six or seven different solutions, you want those solutions to communicate together, or else you are not going to come close to getting the value out of what those can provide,” he said.
Redefining safety
Lazer Logistics could not use traditional vehicle metrics such as harsh cornering and harsh braking because its operations are unique, however, that did not mean that it cannot rely on technology to ensure the safety of its personnel.
“We use a company called Tomorrow.io for weather monitoring, because weather can have a huge safety impact onsite. If there’s snow or ice, that increases the likelihood that there’d be an accident. Wind is another one. If you’re opening the doors on the back of the trailer and the wind catches it and slams it shut, you can be injured by that,” Wolfenden said.
By integrating Geotab’s vehicle positioning capabilities with Tomorrow.io, Lazer Logistics is able to send notifications to drivers who are in the most immediate danger of incoming weather hazards.
“If high winds are coming, we can ping those drivers because we know where they are in relation to that weather,” he noted.
Meanwhile, RailWorks is leveraging their safety scorecards to renegotiate terms with insurance providers.
“When we use data for insurance renewal, we are sharing with our insurance company data that is going to make their bottom line better. We are able to get between a quarter to three quarters of a point knocked off, very quickly, just by having a 30-minute conversation with them,” Wolterman said.
Looking ahead at the next three to five years, the future of telematics is uncertain especially with the rapid evolution of AI. This is why data silos should be a thing of the past, Peebles reiterated.
“I think it’s going to be the most dynamic period we have ever seen across three to five years, so you should start doing whatever you can now to pull that data into a place where you can aggregate it, remove data silos and use the data to face future challenges,” he concluded.
