This HVAC Owner Installed GPS Tracking and Cut Overtime in 60 Days

January 19, 2026

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This HVAC Owner Installed GPS Tracking and Cut Overtime in 60 Days

A regional HVAC contractor in the Midwest spent three months watching his payroll swell. Every week, the owner noticed technicians clocking overtime on days when the schedule looked manageable on paper. The numbers didn’t add up, and he couldn’t pinpoint where the hours were vanishing.

“I’d look at the dispatch board and see six jobs,” the owner said. “Then I’d see eight hours of overtime at the end of the day. Something wasn’t right, but I had no way to know what.”

The company operated five service vans covering a metro area with roughly 30 service calls per day. The owner trusted his technicians, but the blind spot gnawed at him. He wasn’t tracking where his trucks went between jobs or how long technicians spent on site versus driving or waiting for the next assignment.

The Breaking Point

Overtime costs were consuming nearly 18 percent of the company’s profit margins during peak season. The owner assumed technicians were hitting traffic or dealing with complicated repairs that ran long. He figured some inefficiency was inevitable in field service work.

Then one Friday afternoon, a customer called to complain that a technician had arrived 90 minutes late despite being “just around the corner” according to the dispatcher. The owner pulled the day’s route manually and realized the technician had zigzagged across town, hitting jobs in an order that made no geographic sense.

That weekend, he researched GPS tracking systems for fleet management and decided to install tracking devices in every vehicle by Monday.

What the Data Revealed

Within the first week, the GPS system exposed problems the owner had never considered:

Technicians were spending 45 minutes or more between jobs waiting for dispatch to assign the next call.
One driver’s route on Tuesday covered 62 miles to complete four jobs that should have required 38 miles of driving.
Another technician sat parked outside a coffee shop for 30 minutes during what the owner thought was active service time.

“I wasn’t trying to catch anyone doing something wrong,” the owner explained. “I just wanted to see what was actually happening out there.”

The data showed that routing decisions made by the dispatcher—who worked off a static map and phone updates—were costing the company hours every day.

The field service management software market has grown to $5.64 billion in 2025 precisely because businesses are discovering how much money disappears in the gaps between jobs. The owner integrated the GPS tracking with scheduling software that could assign calls based on real-time technician location rather than guesswork.

Sixty Days of Adjustment

Two months after installing the GPS system, overtime hours had dropped by 34 percent. The company saved an average of 11 hours per week by optimizing routes and eliminating idle time between jobs. The owner calculated that the changes put roughly $4,200 per month back into the business—money that had been leaking out in small, invisible increments.

“We weren’t working any less,” the owner said. “We were just working smarter. The guys weren’t driving all over creation anymore.”

Faster Response and Happier Customers

The GPS data also revealed a secondary benefit. Customer callback times improved because dispatchers could now see which technician was genuinely closest to an urgent job.

One afternoon, a furnace failed at a daycare center, and the dispatcher rerouted a technician who was seven minutes away instead of sending the next available driver who was 40 minutes out. The daycare owner called the next day to thank the company for the fast response.

Technician Morale and Real-Time Updates

The owner mentioned that technician morale improved once routes made geographic sense. Drivers weren’t backtracking or sitting idle waiting for assignments. They finished their days faster and felt less frustrated by wasted drive time.

According to recent industry data, 74 percent of mobile workers report higher customer expectations for real-time updates, and the GPS system allowed the company to text accurate arrival windows instead of rough estimates.

The Operational Shift

The GPS tracking uncovered one issue the owner hadn’t anticipated. Fuel costs were higher than necessary because two technicians consistently drove above posted speed limits between jobs. The system flagged harsh acceleration and braking patterns, which pointed to driving habits that burned extra fuel.

The owner addressed it in a team meeting without singling anyone out, and fuel expenses dropped by nine percent over the next month.

The company now manages dispatch entirely through real-time location data rather than phone check-ins. The owner tracks metrics like:

Average drive time per job
Idle time per technician
Miles driven per completed service call

He adjusts schedules when patterns suggest inefficiency.

The global GPS tracker market reached $4.04 billion in 2024 and is projected to hit $9.83 billion by 2030 because small businesses like this one are discovering that visibility translates directly into cost savings.

“I can’t believe we ran this business blind for so long,” the owner said. “You can’t fix what you can’t see.”

The HVAC company isn’t chasing complex technology or expensive enterprise software. The owner installed a straightforward GPS tracking system and used the data to make basic operational adjustments. The result was measurable within weeks and sustainable within two months.