Every day Fleetmatics collected about 30 million data points from the vans and trucks of its customers. A plumber or a landscaping firm could open a web browser and see where every vehicle was, how fast it was going, and how long it had idled. In 2012 software sold over the web was winning over big companies. Fleetmatics, from Dublin, sold it to the small ones, with more than 16,000 customers and 281,000 vehicles when it filed.

Two Irish Trackers Combine

Fleetmatics formed in Dublin in 2004 by combining two fleet management companies, WebSoft and Moviltec. From the start it ran its software as a hosted service that customers reached through a web browser. A small device in each vehicle sent location and driving data over cellular networks. Most customers were small and medium-sized businesses with fewer than 1,000 vehicles. Fleetmatics grew by selling hard in the United States, where it opened a base near Boston.

Verizon Pays Sixty

Fleetmatics priced its IPO at $17 a share in October 2012 and listed on the New York Stock Exchange as FLTX. It kept adding customers and sold more shares in follow-on offerings in 2013. Verizon was building a business around connected vehicles. In 2016 it agreed to buy Fleetmatics for $60 a share in cash, about $2.4 billion. The deal closed in November 2016, and Fleetmatics became part of Verizon Connect.

Cover: Covered Wagons (Souvenir of the Morvan), Charles François Daubigny. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a train of covered wagons (a fleet on the road).