How Savage Transformed Operations Across 1,200 Vehicles with Geotab

When a transportation company grows 10 to 20% every year, every operational gap gets amplified. More vehicles. More drivers. More risk. More complexity.   

That was the reality for Savage — a transportation and logistics company managing a mixed fleet of 800 Class 8 heavy trucks and approximately 400 light pickup vehicles. The challenge wasn't just scale. It was threefold:

• How do you maintain a rigorous safety culture across hundreds of drivers?
• How do you adopt new technology without disrupting systems that already work?
• How do you turn massive amounts of fleet data into decisions that actually matter?

The Solution: Geotab across every vehicle, integrated into every workflow

Savage deployed Geotab across 100% of its fleet — all 1,200 vehicles — through reseller partner Pana Pacific. But the deployment wasn't just about tracking. It became the operational backbone for safety, maintenance, integrations, and long-term technology decisions.

Safety starts with real-time data

At Savage, every single meeting begins with a safety briefing. Safety is cultural — but culture needs evidence to sustain itself. That's where Geotab comes in.

"Anyone can have tons of data, but you have to be able to act upon it."
 — Tyler Flynn, Equipment Oversight, Savage

Driver behavior data surfaces coaching opportunities before incidents escalate. Real-time alerts help managers decide whether a driver needs to pull over immediately or can continue to scheduled maintenance. And when accidents happen that aren't the driver's fault, the data makes that clear.

The cultural shift took time. Early on, some drivers resisted being monitored, but that resistance is gone. Now drivers understand that the Geotab telematics system protects them and exonerates them in many cases.

"We see in many cases where our drivers do just what they need to be doing and it's the public that they interface with that caused the problem — and they're exonerated. We can reward that behavior."
 — Wade Argyle, Fleet Manager, Savage

An open platform that works with existing systems — not against them 

Savage has its own internal development team. They build proprietary tools and they weren't about to replace them. The question was: could a telematics platform plug in without forcing a systems overhaul?

Geotab's Open API made it possible. Savage's developers pull exactly the data they need, in formats that feed directly into existing internal workflows — without switching platforms or losing institutional infrastructure.

“The ability to pivot and change and keep what we want — that's allowed us to be flexible. The openness of Geotab and the decision they made to have that open ecosystem has been beneficial for us.”  — Tyler Flynn, Equipment Oversight, Savage

Maintenance intelligence: knowing what to fix and when

Not every fault code means pull over now. Geotab gives Savage the granularity to tell the difference.That distinction — urgent vs. deferrable — is the difference between an unplanned breakdown on a highway and a scheduled shop visit.

Maintenance records are tracked and reported through the same data layer, closing the loop from alert to resolution.

“The data from Geotab is so detailed and so robust. It can tell us if it's something that the driver needs to pull over and be addressed immediately, or if it's something that can wait until the next routine maintenance.” — Wade Argyle, Fleet Manager, Savage

Results at glance

What comes next: autonomous, electric, and hydrogen

Savage isn't waiting to see where transportation technology lands. They're already running pilots — and using Geotab data to decide where each new technology actually makes sense. The philosophy is deliberate: invest in emerging technologies before they're standard, but use real operational data to make those investments in the right places.

•  Autonomous trucking: Savage piloted autonomous vehicles in Utah and is tracking precursor technologies as a controlled path toward safe, scalable autonomy.
•  Electric vehicles: Geotab's route and utilization data helps Savage identify which vehicles — by actual miles driven and routes run — are realistic EV candidates. Where battery range falls short of operational needs, they're not forcing it.
•  Hydrogen: For routes where EVs don't fit, Savage is exploring a hydrogen partnership with Sympio — with Geotab data informing which segments of the fleet are the best candidates.

Learn here how Geotab’s transportation and logistic solutions help drive productivity, safety and compliance for small to large fleets.