Just because you’re out of the office, driving the company car from client to client, don’t think your exact whereabouts aren’t being watched. Because more and more companies are paying for GPS service to monitor where their fleet vehicles are at every moment of the day–in virtually real time.

“We have what we call a black box solution, which is hardwired into the vehicle typically up underneath the dash, that provides detailed information on every place the vehicle went, how long it was there, what route it took to get there,” says GPS Fleet Solutions President Eron Iler.

His company has installed Global Position technologies in companies from Florida to California, predicting that the companies can soon begin saving 20% of their costs by reducing wasted routes, wasted time idling and wasted use of the wrong vehicle when a closer truck would be better suited, which reduces the amount of money spent on gasoline, tailpipe emissions and wear and tear on the fleet. Companies like Earthscapes Complete Landscaping.

“I can tell how long his (foreman’s) lunch break is, per se, I can see how long he’s stopped at and idling somewhere at a customer’s house. So it’s helped me a lot on the ‘trust’ factor.”

Examples of the bad apples caught thanks to GPS monitored trucks were caught with the company car at the golf course, or with the company truck hauling a sofa, or the business vehicle at the motocross track.

But proponents of the GPS say it’s not really about catching the bad apples, but noticing the good apples and then making a more uniform “applesauce” for the entire fleet staff.

Whether it still feels a little too much like George Orwell’s Big Brother probably depends whether you’re the employee driving the company car, or the owner of the company watching his or her money.