The QC's at most carriers, the larger ones, anyway, like Panther and FedEx, have been bought and paid for many, many times over. Three years ago a complete new QC unit (bubble, screen, cables, connectors, complete) cost $1200. It's considerably cheaper now for the same OmniTracks. About $800 new from Qualcomm, or less than $400 off eBay.
The new OmniVision is a about two grand, a little more (as much as $2400) for an individual or a small fleet (but even that's coming down now), and
considerably less for a larger fleet. Considerably.
A large fleet of more than 400 units is going to pay somewhere around $40 a month, flat, for Qualcomm services (it's not really a per-truck pricing, especially with larger fleets. It's done with fleet averaging, instead, but it works out to be about these numbers.) Fleets of more than 600 or 800 and it's gonna be in the $30 a month range. These numbers incorporate OmniVision units commingled with OmniTracks units.
There are additional charges attached to OmniVision, depending on what extra services the carrier may choose, like Maptuit navigation, WiFi Internet and e-mail services. The additional charges are surprisingly small, however. (Which begs the question as to why Qualcomm charges soooo friggin' much for SMS text messaging, which I do not participate in, BTW).
Incidentally, nearly two years ago Qualcomm ceased all pricing plans that charged by the character. All plans. Even the ones where dispatchers insist otherwise and tell you that your carrier still pays by the byte. Not only do they not charge by the byte any longer, they actually have considerably more bandwidth available for less cost than they used to (Ku-Band satellite, CDMA and AMPS. Plus 802.11 is available.), which is why they can offer things like GPS navigation and turn-by-turn directions, real-time GPS tracking instead of every 15 or 30 minutes or so, over-the-air software updates and feature additions, tons of other things.
Bottom line is, not including the new OmniVision units, the $35 weekly fee covers the roughly $10 a week that Qualcomm gets paid, and then some. Like, for example, a large fleet may have an incremental migration to the OmniVision units in, say, for example, big trucks and straight trucks, while at the same time having hundreds of cargo vans paying $25 a week over and above the services costs on already-paid-for equipment that can easily pay for the new OmniVision units as they come online.
In one year the $35 a cargo vans pays for their QC, they will have paid for the van's monthly services, as well as for the hardware costs of one new OmniVision. By the time all the big and straight trucks are OmniVision equipped, they will be poised to then pay for the new units that will gradually go into the cargo vans. By the time a vehicle in the fleet gets an OmniVision, it will be, for all intents and purposes, already paid for. 100 percent.
Go ahead and add up the
Depreciation + mnthly usage fees + losses + mntnce + installation (installation we pay for up front, actually and then add in the initial cost of the unit, and no, we're not getting a bargain. Add in the quite literally free QC units that Panther received in the Con-Way NOW buyout and the numbers are even more wacko.
Somebody's getting a bargain, but it ain't us. Granted, there are losses, but they are minor and rare, and there are repair and administrative costs, but again, relatively speaking, very minor, especially in light of Qualcomm's 36 month warranty.
To keep it simple, figure 1000 trucks at $35 a week times 52 weeks and you're looking at more than $1.8 million in gross QC revenue. Even if they went out and bought 1000 brand new OmniVisions at $2000 each (way more than they actually pay for them), $1.8 mil will go a long way towards that, even removing the half million dollars in annual service fees on 1000 trucks, you're still left with a sizable chunk of cash to pay off the hardware, which would be paid in full within 18-24 months. The costs of equipment, usage fees, depreciation, maintenance, repair, all of it, and the net is, well, a bargain at half the price.
More trucks, bigger numbers, bigger bargains. It's all good, but it kills me that people think paying 3 times what something is worth is a good thing. A carrier's profit on the QC is sizable, and is part of a reported revenue stream. Dig into any publicly traded trucking company or the some of the reports that go to Qualcomm stockholders, and you'll see just how significant of a chunk of a carrier's bills are, in fact, being paid with these fees, or how much of it is simply added to the bottom line. Don't laugh. It's true.
Slow and steady, even in expediting, wins the race - Aesop
about you. If they are fodder, so you be.
