Rental fleet management for cars and vans on hire
Where a hire fleet loses what it earned
Ask a hire operator in Malta what the month quietly cost them and the answer lands on the same four things.
The child seat that does not come back
A car goes out with a seat in it and returns without one. Nobody wrote down which car it left on, the customer remembers the handover differently, and you buy a replacement because Saturday morning needs a seat on the counter.
Mileage read off the dash, a week apart
The allowance is worth billing past and the excess rate is on the agreement, but the figure comes from one number read at pick-up and another read at return. Nobody wants an argument over 40 km with a customer who is late for a flight, so the line gets waived.
Half the fleet is idle and nobody knows which half
Twenty cars and a good week feels like a good week. Which registration sat on the yard for eleven days of the month is a question the booking sheet answers slowly and the accountant answers too late.
The overdue car nobody can place
A return was due at five. At seven the phone goes unanswered, the car is not on the yard, and all anyone can do is ring the number on the agreement again and wait for the morning.
One hire, from the keys to the invoice line
Times are an example. The sequence is what a hire fleet runs whether or not anything is tracking it.
- 108:05
Keys over the counter
The car goes out with its own record behind it: registration, specifications, insurance and the VRT certificate, in one profile instead of a folder in the back office. Trip history starts counting the moment it pulls off the yard.
- 208:12
The child seat goes with it
A tag on the seat is read by the tracker in the car, so the record says which vehicle the seat left on. Move that tag onto a different seat next season and the history it already carries stays with it.
- 311:40
The second desk rings
A walk-in wants a van this afternoon. The live map holds every asset on one screen, updating every 10 to 30 seconds while a vehicle moves, so the answer is what is actually free. Each desk sees the cars you give it, because visibility is set per user by asset or by group.
- 416:55
Back on the yard
A geofence around the depot reads the car as inside it, so the return lands without anyone watching the gate. Draw a second zone around your airport bay and both places report the same way.
- 518:20
The one that is not back
The car due at five is on the map, parked in Buġibba. You ring the customer knowing where the car is, which is a different phone call from the one you make when you do not.
- 6Thursday
A renewal before it bites
Insurance on one of the vans runs out next month and the reminder reaches you ahead of the date. A car off the road for paperwork is a car nobody can hire, in the week you needed it most.
- 7Month end
What each car earned
Distance and trips per vehicle come out as PDF or Excel for the period, which is where the excess mileage line gets its evidence. Utilisation sits beside it on rolling 7, 30 and 90-day windows, so the car that spent eleven days on the yard is a figure rather than a feeling.
What you pay depends on how many vehicles you run and what you fit to them. Tell our Malta team both and we will quote it.
Ask for a quoteWhat rental fleet management in Malta runs on
Four of these come from the tracking account and three from the Mobility app. The line under the grid says how that is sold, and it is worth reading before you plan a budget around any single card.
- GeofencingA zone around the depot and another around the airport bay. Triggers are inside and outside, so a car back on the yard reads as inside its zone.Yipii IoT
- Vehicle recordsOne profile per car: registration, specifications, assignments, documents and service history, so the handover admin lives in one place.Yipii Mobility
- Documents & complianceInsurance, registration and VRT certificates against the vehicle, each with a reminder before the date passes.Yipii Mobility
- UtilisationThe distance a car actually covered against the distance you targeted, on rolling 7, 30 and 90-day windows.Yipii Mobility
The live map, the geofences, the trip reports and the tags are part of Yipii IoT, the core tracking account, and that is what most of this page runs on. The vehicle records, the document reminders and the utilisation figures come from Yipii Mobility instead, which is bought as one subscription covering the whole app. There is no plan that sells you vehicle records and withholds utilisation, and we cannot quote a single Mobility capability on its own. So a hire operator pricing this page is pricing a Yipii IoT account plus the whole Mobility add-on, and we would rather you knew that before the call than during it.
Included with Yipii Mobility, the add-on that extends your IoT account. One subscription covers everything in the app, so no feature here is sold on its own. What Yipii Mobility includes
A tracker that comes out again, and one that does not
A hire fleet turns over. Cars arrive on a short lease and leave again, and wiring a tracker into a vehicle you will not own next season is money you never see back. Those get a plug-in unit: a Teltonika FMB003 or FMC003 in the OBD port, or, where the port sits somewhere awkward, an FMB120 or FMC130 class unit run off a 12-pin cable into the cigarette lighter socket. A minute at each end, and nothing left behind in the loom. The cars and vans that stay in your fleet get that same FMB120 or FMC130 class hardwired behind the dash, where nobody in the passenger seat can reach it. The trade is worth stating plainly: a plug-in tracker can be unplugged, and what you have then is a car that stops reporting and an alert telling you it went quiet, rather than a car you can still watch.
- Plug-in Teltonika FMB003 or FMC003 in the OBD port, in and out in a minute
- A 12-pin cigarette lighter cable for the FMB120 and FMC130 class, where the OBD port is awkward
- Hardwired FMB120 or FMC130 class for the vehicles that stay in the fleet
- A Yipii multi-network SIM that switches between GO, Melita and Epic
- Bluetooth tags for the seats, helmets and boxes that go out with a car
Three levers, and the arithmetic under them
The model below is a ten-car hire fleet over a year, with every assumption showing. Change the excess rate or the daily rate and the figure moves with it.
A ten-car hire fleet over a year. More than half of it is mileage you can evidence instead of waive.
A plug-in tracker can be unplugged, and you find that out afterwards.
| Lever | Assumption | Over a year |
|---|---|---|
| Excess mileage you can evidence | 6 hires a month running 120 km past the allowance, billed at €0.15 a km, over 12 months | €1,296 |
| Idle days you spot sooner | One car a month back on hire 2 days earlier, at €35 a day, over 12 months | €840 |
| Accessories traced instead of replaced | 8 child seats a year going missing at €60 each, half of them traced to the car they left on | €240 |
Argue with the mileage row first, because the excess rate and the number of hires that run over are yours rather than ours. Every row also assumes the tag goes on the seat and the tracker stays in the car, which is a habit at the desk rather than a setting in the software. Illustrative arithmetic, not a measured customer outcome.
Frequently asked
Run a trip report on that vehicle for the dates of the hire. It gives distance and trips per vehicle, exports to PDF or Excel, and covers up to 31 days in one report, so a monthly hire is one report and a long lease is a few. The figure comes from the tracker's own positions rather than from the instrument cluster, so read it as the record of what the car covered while the device was fitted and reporting. That is a stronger position than two numbers written on a form a week apart, and you can send it to the customer with the invoice.
It depends which half of this page you want, and we would rather answer it now than on the call. The live map, the geofences, the trip reports and the tags are Yipii IoT, the core tracking account, and a hire fleet can run all of that on its own. The vehicle records, the document expiry reminders and the utilisation figures live in Yipii Mobility, the add-on that extends an IoT account. Mobility is all or nothing: one subscription covers the whole app, so there is no version that gives you the vehicle records and leaves out utilisation, and no way to quote one capability from it. Most rental operators who call us want both, and the quote says so on one line.
Yes, with tags rather than trackers. Rental firms use the same tags on the accessories that go out with a vehicle: baby seats, helmets, roof boxes. The tag says which car the seat left on and whether it came back on the same one. The cell lasts one to two years in daily use, Yipii reports its voltage, and you change it yourself. One limit to know before you buy a box of them: a tag is read by a tracker within about 10 metres, and what comes back is signal strength rather than a distance, so a seat sitting in a store room with no tracked car nearby reports nothing at all. Move a tag onto another seat and the history it already has stays with it.
See where it is. The live map carries the position, updated every 10 to 30 seconds while the car is moving, and a geofence around your depot reads the car as inside it once it is home. What Yipii has no version of is a late-return alert, because there is no dwell-time alert anywhere in the product: the dwell settings on a geofence debounce the detection rather than time a stay. The overdue list stays yours to keep, and what you gain is a place to start the phone call. Some operators also ask about a tracker that lets the vehicle start only for an authorised credential. We fit that, it is not written up in our documentation yet, so this page describes it no further and we go through it with you on your own cars instead.
It depends on how many vehicles you hire out, how many need a hardwired tracker rather than a plug-in one, how many accessories you want tagged, and whether you take the Mobility add-on for the vehicle records and the document reminders. We quote per fleet rather than publishing a price list, because a six-car hire desk and a sixty-van rental business are not the same job. One thing that helps a seasonal fleet: billing counts tracked assets rather than devices, so moving a plug-in unit out of a car you have handed back and into the one replacing it does not add a line. Tell us the shape of the fleet and we will come back with a figure and a fitting date.
Tags on the accessories, and movement at an hour nobody booked, are two cross-industry jobs a hire fleet runs. Both are written up under Tool & equipment tracking and Theft recovery & unauthorised movement.