Fuel Monitoring System in Khandwa: Diesel Level for Mandi Trucks

A fuel sensor is worth what you do with the numbers, so decide the routine before the first vehicle is fitted. For a Khandwa fleet a workable week starts on Monday morning with a ten-minute look at the Trakzee Premium fuel report. Sort the vehicles by litres per hundred kilometres, note the two or three that look odd, and write the registration numbers on a sheet. Do nothing dramatic on the first week. The first few weeks mostly teach you what a normal reading looks like for each truck, taxi and bus.

Talk to drivers with the record in front of you, not with a suspicion. A dispatcher can say that the truck left the yard with a certain level, reached the mill gate with a certain level and stood idle for three hours in between, and then ask what happened. Drivers answer more honestly when the question is specific and the evidence is a graph with a time on it. Share the same screen with the driver where it helps; many of them quickly learn that a clean record protects them too.

Khandwa's duty pattern should shape the schedule. When soybean and chana arrive in bulk, the yards crowd up and trucks wait, so read idle hours and fuel side by side. During festival weeks on the Omkareshwar run, taxis and tempo travellers cover many more kilometres, so compare their mileage against an ordinary week instead of against each other. Campus buses are steadier, so any change from their own usual figure deserves a question. Sub-users can be created so the dispatcher sees the fleet while the accountant sees only reports.

At month-end, export the fuel and trip reports and place them beside the pump slips and the diesel purchase register. Mark every difference you cannot explain, however small, and carry the list into the next month. After three months you will know which vehicles are steady, which are noisy because of a tank or a road, and which deserve a recalibration request. That list is the real product of the system: it tells you where to spend an hour of attention and where you can safely spend none.

BearTech works from Bhopal, so for Khandwa the installation is done by a BearTech executive who travels to your vehicle. Travel and stay charges for that visit are paid by the client, and BearTech confirms the amount before you place the order, so there is no surprise on the day. The ₹19,999 price covers the hardware, the app plan and the SIM. Delivery of the kit takes about two working days, and the visit is then fixed for a day when the vehicle will be standing at your yard, workshop or parking.

On the day the work follows a fixed order. First the executive looks at the tank and records the fuel type and the depth. A small opening is made in the upper surface of the tank, then the rod is trimmed to suit your tank's depth, bolted down and sealed. The FMB920 is connected to the vehicle's supply and paired with the probe, through a cable for Omnicomm and over Bluetooth for the other two. Calibration comes next, matching what the probe reads to actual litres, which is the step that makes the number meaningful.

After that the vehicle is registered on Trakzee Premium and you receive a login that works on the phone app and in a browser. Before the executive packs up, open the app together and check that your truck shows on the map and that the litres look sensible. This is the quickest moment to catch a wrong probe length, a loose connection or a SIM problem. If you have several vehicles, ask for them to be done in one visit; it keeps the travel charge to a single trip.

Full payment falls due once the fitting is done. Customers outside Bhopal, Khandwa included, can pay a small token amount and settle the balance cash on delivery. Keep the vehicle accessible, the tank reasonably clean and the registration and tank size handy. Once the equipment is supplied it cannot be sent back, refunded or swapped for another model, which is exactly why the advice on sensor and probe length comes first.

Start from the price per vehicle. The package is ₹19,999 and covers the Teltonika FMB920 tracker, one fuel level sensor, fitting, Trakzee Premium software, an Airtel SIM and one year of warranty with AMC. The figure does not change with your choice of sensor brand. From the second year the software and SIM renewal is ₹3,000 a year per vehicle. For one vehicle that is ₹19,999 in the first year, ₹22,999 after two years and ₹25,999 after three.

Now take a mixed Khandwa fleet of twelve, made up of mandi trucks, two taxis and a couple of buses. Twelve times ₹19,999 comes to ₹2,39,988 for the first year. Renewal for twelve vehicles is 12 times ₹3,000, which is ₹36,000 a year. So the running total is ₹2,39,988 after year one, ₹2,75,988 after year two and ₹3,11,988 after year three. This is an illustration to help you plan, not a customer story, and it leaves out the visit charge described below.

Outside Bhopal the one extra item is the travel and stay charge for the BearTech executive. It is paid by the client and confirmed before you order. If all twelve vehicles are fitted during one visit, you pay for one trip rather than twelve. That is a real saving worth organising, and it is the practical reason to line vehicles up in one yard on one day. Price may vary with requirements, so for a fleet ask for the latest figure on 97526 44035.

A fair way to judge the spend is to divide it by the months and the vehicles. Over three years a vehicle costs ₹25,999 in total, so roughly ₹722 a month for everything the package covers. Compare that with the diesel your vehicle burns in a week. Whether a fuel record is worth it depends on how much diesel goes unexplained today, and only your own books can answer that. We do not claim a percentage saving, because it would be invented.

All three options give the same service, so the choice is about how the vehicle is built and used. Omnicomm LLS-AF 4 is wired. It connects to the tracker's analog input by cable and draws power from the vehicle, so it never needs a sensor battery. It is sealed to a high standard and works across a wide temperature range, which suits trucks that spend afternoons in the Khandwa summer, where the city has recorded about 47.6 degrees Celsius.

Mercetech and Mielta Fantom are Bluetooth sensors. The reading travels to the tracker without a signal cable, which can matter where the tank sits far from the tracker, where wiring is awkward, or where a vehicle changes hands often. BearTech still puts the probe inside the tank. A wireless sensor runs on an internal cell that wears out with use and sits outside warranty cover, so plan for its replacement in your budget.

Mielta Fantom adds features useful in a mixed fleet: a steel flange held by four bolts, a fit for steel or plastic tanks alike, and its own temperature and tilt readings. It is set up and calibrated through the Mielta phone app. If your yard has an old steel tank on one truck and a plastic one on a staff van, it deserves a look. Mercetech is a capacitive Bluetooth probe with an octagonal head and four fixing holes.

In practice, trucks that work hard every day suit the wired option, and the vehicles where a cable is a problem suit one of the Bluetooth ones. The price is identical, so you lose nothing by choosing on merit. BearTech picks the rod length, names the exact model once your tank has been seen, and may send a comparable one if your first choice is out of stock. If you are unsure, write the vehicle type and tank size on WhatsApp and we will suggest one.

The onion or soybean truck bound for the mandi is the clearest case. It leaves loaded, joins a queue and waits, unloads, and returns. A fuel reading at the yard gate, at the exit and back in the parking lets the owner see litres per trip as well as kilometres per trip. If one truck uses visibly more than another on the same run, the owner has a reason to inspect it, and to ask the driver where the extra time went.

The taxi or tempo traveller for Omkareshwar and Hanuwantiya has a different pattern: long drives, halts at the destination, and a bill that depends on the kilometres. Mileage per trip lets the owner price a run correctly and notice when a vehicle is drinking more than usual before it becomes a repair. Parking and stoppage reports show how long the vehicle waited at the destination, with the engine on or off. Choose a probe suited to the tank in your particular model.

The college or staff bus is steady. It runs a fixed route twice a day, so consumption should be almost the same every week. That makes it easy to spot a change. A bus that starts using more fuel on the same route may have a tyre, brake or filter problem, or a new driver with a heavier foot. The transport in-charge can compare drivers on the same route without much argument, because the road and the distance do not change.

The family car or bike is the case where we ask you to call first. This package pairs a tracker with a probe in a tank, and a bike runs on petrol with a small tank, so it is usually the wrong product. A diesel car may be possible, but the tank shape matters. Tell us the model and we will say honestly whether it fits, or whether a simple GPS tracker serves you better for much less money.

Think of the system as four parts that pass one number along. The probe is a thin rod inside the tank. It is capacitive, which means its reading changes as the diesel rises or falls along its length. BearTech cuts it to the depth of your tank at fitting, so it covers the full range from empty to full. For tanks with an opening on the upper side, as on most trucks and buses, this is a clean and lasting arrangement.

The Teltonika FMB920 is the tracker that listens. It reads the probe, either on its analog input for the wired Omnicomm or over Bluetooth for the other two, and it reads its own location from satellites at the same time. It also notes ignition, speed and movement. Having the fuel level and the position stamped together is what makes the data useful, because a drop or a refill is always tied to a place and a time you can look at on the map.

The Airtel SIM inside the tracker carries both readings to the Trakzee Premium platform. If the vehicle goes through a patch with no signal, a gap can show in the record until coverage returns, and on any road a short break is possible. This is part of why we mention network openly. The SIM comes arranged by BearTech along with the tracker, so there is nothing to buy or switch on separately, and its yearly service is covered by the same renewal as the software.

On your side, Trakzee Premium turns the stream into screens. The fuel graph shows the level over time, with refills and sudden drops marked. Reports add consumption, mileage, trip and stoppage views for each vehicle, and geo-fences mark arrival and exit at a yard or gate. The app runs on Android and iOS and the same login works in a browser. A mandi truck, a taxi and a college bus all use the same screens, and that simplicity is deliberate.