Fuel Monitoring System in Sindhudurg: Tank Readings on Konkan Ghats and Creek Roads

A Devgad mango tempo in April. Crates are loaded at a packing shed in the evening and the tempo heads north on the Mumbai–Goa highway for the Vashi market. The owner, staying back in Devgad, sees a refill near the start, a long falling line through the night and a flat patch where the driver rested. When the morning level fits the distance covered, the trip needs no further thought. The record gives litres per Mumbai run, the figure the owner uses to price the next consignment.

A fish van out of Malvan. It leaves the landing centre quickly and halts only at markets. Its graph should show short, steady falls between stops. If one week's rounds use clearly more diesel than the previous week's over the same markets, the owner looks at the engine, the tyres and any detour before anything else. The record gives diesel per market round and the length of every halt.

A cashew pickup near Kudal. In the dry months it shuttles between orchards, collection points and a processing unit, making many short trips a day. Refills are frequent and small, so the dated refill list matters more here than the shape of the graph, and each fill can be ticked against its pump slip at the end of the week. The record gives the number of fills and litres used per week.

A tourist mini-bus on the Tarkarli and Amboli circuit. Through the winter season it climbs the ghat on most days. Climbing burns more diesel and tilts the tank on every bend, so the owner reads the level at the hotel car park, standing level, rather than halfway up the slope. The record gives diesel per guest trip, which is handy when quoting packages for next season.

Sindhudurg is the southern end of Maharashtra's Konkan, a strip between the Arabian Sea and the Sahyadri ridge, with Ratnagiri to the north, Kolhapur over the ghats and Goa to the south. The Mumbai–Goa highway and the Konkan Railway run through it, and Kankavli, Kudal, Sawantwadi and Sindhudurg Nagari sit along that belt. Creeks and short rivers such as the Karli break the coast into pockets, so routes bend and detour.

Fruit and nuts drive much of the freight. In spring, hapus from Devgad leaves in tempos and trucks for Mumbai, Pune and other markets, and the orchards keep vehicles busy for weeks. Cashew factories draw nuts from orchards and collection points through the dry months, and kokum adds smaller loads. Laterite stone cut on the plateaus moves to building sites on trucks of its own.

The coast adds fish and visitors. Insulated vans carry the catch from Malvan, Devgad and Vengurla and cannot afford long halts. Tourist cars, jeeps and mini-buses run to the Tarkarli beaches, Sindhudurg fort and the Amboli hills through the cooler months. Schools in Kudal, Sawantwadi and Kankavli send buses into hamlets along narrow creek and ghat roads, and around Ganeshotsav travel between Mumbai and the Konkan swells.

This mix means diesel is spent in bursts: weeks of mango runs, a winter of tourist climbs, a fishing pause in the rains. A monthly fuel bill hides those bursts. A tank record per vehicle shows each one clearly, so an owner can set a mango season beside a tourist season, vehicle by vehicle, and see which job really costs what.

A fuel monitoring system on a Malvan fish van has a probe in the diesel tank and a tracker under the dashboard, and together they answer one question: how much diesel is in there right now, and where is the van? Neither part works alone. The probe knows the level but not the place; the tracker knows the place but not the level.

The probe goes in through a hole made in the tank's upper surface and stands upright, cut to the depth of that tank. As diesel rises around it the signal changes, and as the level falls the signal changes back. In effect it senses how much of its own length sits in fuel. A deep truck tank and a shallow van tank therefore need probes of different length, chosen after BearTech sees them.

The Teltonika FMB920 picks up the probe's signal, by cable from Omnicomm or by Bluetooth from Mercetech and Mielta Fantom, and joins it with position, ignition state and speed. The Airtel SIM carries the bundle to Trakzee Premium. Calibration on fitting day links the raw signal with real quantities of diesel in that tank, which is why it must be repeated if the tank is replaced or the probe is moved.

On the phone, the van appears at the jetty with its level beside it. A refill shows as a step up with a time and a pump location; the run between markets shows as a gentle downward slope; a sharp fall shows as a step down and raises an alert. Mileage and consumption reports then turn those lines into litres per day, per trip or per week for each vehicle.

Begin with one vehicle. The Complete Package costs ₹19,999 in year one and covers the tracker, one sensor of your choice, fitting, Trakzee Premium, the Airtel SIM and a year of warranty with AMC. All three sensors cost the same. From year two, renewal is ₹3,000 per vehicle per year, so one vehicle totals ₹22,999 after two years and ₹25,999 after three; the 2-year and 3-year plans are priced at those same amounts.

Now a small Sindhudurg example: one mango truck from Devgad and one fish van from Malvan. Year one is 2 × ₹19,999 = ₹39,998. Each later year adds 2 × ₹3,000 = ₹6,000. After year two the running total is ₹39,998 + ₹6,000 = ₹45,998, and after year three it is ₹45,998 + ₹6,000 = ₹51,998. The check is simple: 2 × ₹25,999 also gives ₹51,998.

Travel and stay for the executive's visit are extra, paid by the client and named before the order is placed. Fitting both vehicles during one visit keeps that to a single trip. A vehicle with two tanks, or one needing a second probe, is priced separately on request, and quotes for a larger fleet can change with requirements. If the truck also hauls cashew in the dry months, nothing changes in the arithmetic; the package follows the vehicle, not the cargo.

We make no promise of savings. The useful comparison is your own: place the three-year figure beside what these two vehicles spend on diesel in a single mango month, and beside the time spent checking slips and phoning drivers. If the records answer questions you currently cannot, the cost is easy to judge; if they do not, you will know that too. Ask for a quote on 97526 44035.

Say a sudden-drop alert arrives from a mini-bus somewhere on the Amboli ghat. It means the level fell faster than ordinary running explains. On a steep, winding climb that can happen for harmless reasons, so treat the alert as a question, not an answer, and go through a short routine before calling anyone to account.

Look first at the map and the moment: was the vehicle climbing, parked on a bend, or standing in a level car park? A tank on a slope shows a different level from the same tank on flat ground. Then open the whole day's graph. A dip that recovers when the road flattens is tilt or slosh. A step down that holds while the vehicle is parked and level deserves a conversation.

Call the driver while the event is fresh and ask, without accusation, what happened. Put the reading beside the pump slips for that day and the time and place of any refill. Remember that ghat sections may have weak signal, and delayed data can make a gradual fall look abrupt, so check whether the line has gaps around the alert. If the driver mentions a top-up from a can at a village, ask him to keep that receipt as well.

Finally, write the outcome down: date, vehicle, place, explanation and action. Over a season this log shows whether alerts cluster around one bend, one halt or one vehicle, which matters more than any single event. Keep the system's role in view throughout. It records and warns; it does not lock tanks and cannot stop anyone drawing diesel. Lockable caps and clear rules for drivers remain your own measures.