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Company: TagTracker
Website: https://thetagtracker.com/
Country: United States of America
Industry: Automotive
Connectivity: LTE-M / NB-IoT
TagTracker™ delivers an innovative, patented Internet of Things (IoT) solution for tracking dealer tags with GPS intelligence, enabling dealerships to monitor tag location, usage, and security on-demand.
Automotive dealerships face a daily operational challenge: managing dealer tags efficiently, without time-consuming manual tracking or unreliable technology, so customers can safely test-drive and loan vehicles/
The TagTracker™ team designed, developed, and deployed an IoT solution that remotely monitors dealer tag locations using Digital Matter’s discreet, robust Barra GPS tracker inside a smart frame license plate.
Within days of deploying the TagTracker™ solution to remotely monitor dealer tags, automotive dealerships report compelling commercial benefits, including:
While holidaying in Florida, J. Michael Smith watched a 550 SL Mercedes pull into his hotel driveway sporting interstate dealer license plates, also known as "dealer tags." An automotive industry veteran, Smith immediately wondered if the car's dealer, insurer, or floor plan company, financial institutions that provide short-term loans or credit lines to dealerships to stock inventory, knew the dealer tags were 1,400 miles from home.
Dealer tags are special license plates issued to car dealerships that allow unregistered vehicles to be driven legally on public roads. The U.S. Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) mandates their use to ensure vehicles are only driven for approved purposes, such as test drives, loaner cars, or transport between locations to prevent misuse, fraud, and theft.
Non-compliance can result in costly penalties, suspension of dealer licenses, and legal liability for dealerships. For example, a Texan car dealer incurred a $500,000 fine and had their license suspended after issuing over 1,000 temporary dealer tags while reporting just 177 vehicle sales. Every temporary tag issued must correspond to a legitimate sale.
Dealers typically securely store several tags on-site to share among sales teams. In practice, salespeople hoard tags to ensure instant availability for test drives, others misplace tags in the rush of daily operations, and some are lost to bad actors who steal the tags, or the cars they’re attached to, during test drives.
When tags are unavailable, sales teams lose time, and often sales, because customers can’t take a test drive. Traditional tracking methods are slow and error-prone, relying on manual entries in paper logbooks or spreadsheets that quickly became outdated. Early technology solutions added cost and complexity without delivering reliable tag visibility. For example, AirTags were easily damaged or removed, while dummy phones left in cars for tracking were often stolen or not recharged.
Three years after watching that out-of-town Mercedes arrive in Florida, J. Michael Smith is the Founder and President of TagTracker™, a patented Internet of Things (IoT) solution that tracks dealer tags to within two metres using GPS. TagTracker™ works by attaching a smart license plate frame, compatible with most vehicle designs, directly onto a vehicle with the manufacturer’s screws, a process that takes just minutes.
Inside the smart frame sits the slim Digital Matter Barra GPS, a low-cost, high-performance asset tracker. Powered by 2 x AA user-changeable batteries, the Barra GPS tracks vehicles in motion and automatically enters “sleep mode” when stationary to conserve power. Rugged, waterproof and requiring minimal maintenance, its IP68 and IK07-rated housing protects against impact, dust, and brief submersion. Cellular LTE-M (Cat-M1) and NB-IoT connectivity ensures cost-effective, scalable, and reliable tracking over long distances, while an external magnet detects device tampering or removal from the smart frame.
Smith says, "We chose the Digital Matter Barra GPS device for TagTracker™ because it met our core solution requirements: a concealed tracker with an independent power source, tamper-proof features, delivering rich, on-demand into dealer tags to help dealerships reduce risk and improve operational efficiency. Installation and activation are simple, and changing the batteries is as easy as swapping them in a TV remote control.”
When a vehicle moves, the Barra captures GPS location data every two minutes and securely uploads it every thirty minutes. The incoming data is processed into clear reporting that also gives dealers visibility of approximate vehicle speed, distance travelled, runtime, temperature, and more.
The device can be configured to issue alerts, for example notifying dealers of tampering or removal, low battery power, or vehicles moving beyond geo fenced boundaries. Within seconds customizable reports can be generated to streamline audits and support faster, better informed decision making.
Smith and his team have deployed hundreds of TagTracker™ solutions across North America and Canada. The innovative IoT monitoring solution delivers reliable visibility to dealer tag locations, reducing compliance and insurance risk while saving sales teams time and stress spent locating them. By reducing tag losses, theft, and misuse, dealerships cut costs and provide smoother customer experiences for test drives and loaner vehicles, which help accelerate sales cycles.
Smith says, “Dealers track customers during test drives and use that insight to time follow-up sales support to just minutes after the customer returns. One customer reported that TagTracker™ gave his dealership 100 percent increased visibility into dealer tags, improving vehicle management and car sales by 50 percent in the last year. All from a solution that costs less than a dollar a day.”
Josh Howe, Director of Production and Support at TagTracker™, says “We enjoy working with Digital Matter because of the combination of automation, accessibility, and robust support they offer. Everything works seamlessly, from reporting and geofencing to the visual interface and tampering alerts. The visual interface lets anyone, from less experienced to seasoned users, access and act on business-critical information within minutes. The Digital Matter team is creative, helpful, and responsive, and we’re always confident our Barra devices are performing as they should.”
Smith and his team are continually innovating to improve solutions for automotive dealerships. Current projects include using TagTracker™ data to support community safety by notifying dealers of drivers exceeding speed limits. The team are also exploring how monitoring other high-value assets, such as commercial refrigeration trucks, can deliver on-demand visibility, efficiency, and savings, expanding the positive impact of TagTracker™ into different industries.
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