Samsara vs Teletrac Navman: Compare Plans in 2026

Key Takeaways

• Teletrac Navman kept its name and the TN360 platform after Vontier sold a majority stake to Respida Capital. The deal is valued at $220 million, with Teletrac Navman removed from Vontier's continuing operations.

• Neither company publishes a per-vehicle price. Treat both as quote-based, and compare hardware, term length, data exit, and the legal entity on the order form.

• The higher safety package on Samsara lists 30+ risk detections. Teletrac Navman publishes video coaching, scorecards, and harsh-event analytics without a matching detection count on the pages reviewed.

• Teletrac Navman's ELD pages cover hours forecasting, the 34-hour reset, yard moves, personal conveyance, and adverse driving conditions. The IFTA view on that page requires a Promiles integration.

• PeerSpot's October 2026 engagement mindshare was 9.2% for Samsara and 3.3% for Teletrac Navman, with 0 reviews and a 0.0 average shown for both, so that rank is not a satisfaction score.

• A second workflow is useful only when a person outside the telematics inbox must approve a hold, a coaching note, or a maintenance release.

What a buyer is actually choosing

Fleet telematics is the device-and-software record of where a vehicle is, how it is driven, and whether hours, inspections, and fuel tax are in a state you can defend. TL;DR: Samsara and Teletrac Navman are both quote-based, neither product has been discontinued or renamed away, and the July 2026 change is an ownership change at Teletrac Navman, so you are choosing a workflow and a contract, not a public rate card.

The search usually means the trucks are already moving and the short list is down to two logos. The practical choice is which screen your safety, dispatch, and compliance people will open on a Tuesday afternoon. Camera events have to become coaching. Hours of service have to be visible before the next load is assigned. A failed inspection has to become a maintenance job. If you leave, the history has to be exportable. Those are the comparisons that follow.

Teletrac Navman was not shut down. Vontier completed the sale of a majority of the business to Respida Capital and announced that close on July 6, 2026. The transaction sits at a Deal value: $220 million according to Vontier (2026), including cash proceeds of approximately $80 million, and the Teletrac business left Vontier's continuing operations. International Rental News described the buyer as Miami-based Respida Capital, said Vontier kept a minority stake, and reported that the business tracks Tracked assets: around 700,000 according to International Rental News (2026) on- and off-road assets. The same report still quotes Alain Samaha as chief executive.

Samsara was not part of that sale. Its public plans page still sells safety, telematics, asset tracking, and AI usage tiers under the Samsara name, with a pricing request on every package. Teletrac Navman's own site still sells TN360, still offers ELD, DVIR, video, maintenance, and IFTA workflows, and still sends buyers to a pricing request. What changed is the majority owner and the contracting entity you should expect to see on a new order. Ask the salesperson to read that entity name out loud and to confirm whether your current agreement, if you already have one, was assigned.

If your short list also includes other telematics brands, use the logistics comparison of Samsara and Verizon Connect, the Geotab and Samsara comparison, and the Samsara and Motive comparison before you freeze a scorecard. Those pages answer different pairings. They do not replace the ownership and hours-of-service checks on this one.

Who this is for

This comparison is for a fleet manager, safety lead, or operations manager who will sign a telematics agreement for trucks or mixed assets and who needs hours, inspections, and coaching in the same operation as the map. It also fits a buyer renewing Teletrac Navman who has to understand the July 2026 majority-owner change before the next term. It fits a buyer adding camera coaching to a fleet that already runs electronic logs.

Red flags: you require a public per-vehicle price before the first sales call, you will not staff camera review and log edits, or you only want a phone location ping with no hours, inspection, or maintenance record.

Choose the Samsara path when you want the published safety-detection catalog, fuel and route tools on the higher telematics package, and a documented vehicle data API with a stated location cadence. Choose the Teletrac Navman path when you want the TN360 hours dashboard, exemption tracking, a DVIR path into maintenance, and mixed-fleet devices, and when you will paper the new ownership in the order form. Either choice still needs a written quote. The pages reviewed do not let you sort them by sticker price.

How we evaluated these platforms

The weights below are buying criteria for a fleet manager at the point of signature, not a lab score and not a popularity contest. Safety coaching and compliance records carry the most weight because an unreviewed camera event and a missed hours violation are the failures that show up in claims, audits, and downtime. Location, maintenance, and data export sit in the middle because they decide whether dispatch and the shop can act on the same day. Written price and exit sit at 10% because both vendors withhold list prices, so the weight belongs on the contract you still have to collect.

A public page had to state the capability before it counted. Vendor impact studies and named customer stories are reported as the vendor's own claims, separately from the feature list. No price was inferred. Where a page says "get pricing" or "pricing depends," the cell is quote-based.

Engagement on a review site is a separate signal from product fit. As of October 2026, fleet-software mindshare on that site was a Mindshare: 9.2% according to PeerSpot (2026) for Samsara, down from 20.2% the prior year, against 3.3% for Teletrac Navman, down from 3.6%, with 87.5% on all other products. The same page lists Samsara 1st and Teletrac Navman 11th in the category while showing 0 reviews and a 0.0 average for both. Use the mindshare as a measure of attention on that site. Do not treat it as installed-base share or as a star rating.

Side-by-side on the work the software must do

The matrix uses only what the vendor pages stated. "Not on the pages opened" means those pages did not state the item. It does not mean the product lacks it. Confirm gaps in the quote.

While a vehicle is on, location updates run on an On-vehicle cadence: about 5 seconds according to Samsara (2025). The same guide says updates fall to about every hour when the vehicle is off, the device keeps a rolling log of 30 days, and a feed client should wait at least 5 seconds before asking again when there is no next page. Teletrac Navman's fleet page describes live tracking and does not publish a matching ping interval on the pages opened, so put the update rate in the quote if dispatch timing matters.

Two numbers from vendor pages are easy to misuse. The plans page reports a 50% reduction in accidents for Liberty Energy and a 50% reduction in driver attrition for DHL. Those are customer-reported figures on Samsara's own page, not a head-to-head trial against Teletrac Navman. Read them as examples the vendor chose to publish.

Pricing checked against the public pages

Pricing checked October 12, 2026.

Both vendors hide the number a fleet manager most wants. Every package on the Samsara plans page ends in a pricing request. There is no public per-vehicle fee, no public hardware dollar amount, and no public term length. Teletrac Navman's fleet software page says pricing depends on fleet size, asset types, devices, features, and support requirements, and it repeats that the cost varies with hardware, features, and integrations. The old marketing sheets that float around the web are not the current public price. Both entries below are quote-based. No third-party estimate is used.

Ask both sellers for the same sheet: per-asset fee, camera fee, install fee, who owns the hardware at the end of the term, what happens if the vehicle count drops, the early-exit formula, the data-export format, and the legal entity that will invoice you. For Teletrac Navman, add one line after the July 2026 close: the contracting party name, and whether a seller note or minority stake changes support commitments. For the higher AI usage tier on Samsara, the plans page describes it as roughly 4× the usage of the middle AI tier and does not attach a dollar figure. Put that multiple next to a blank price cell and make the seller fill in the price.

Total cost is the quote plus the labor you still perform. Someone reviews video. Someone accepts log edits. Someone closes inspection defects. A cheap device fee with no named reviewer becomes an unread inbox. Price the reviewer hours in your own spreadsheet. Do not borrow a vendor's customer-savings story as your budget.

Samsara for a fleet that wants one operations cloud

Best fit: a fleet that will use camera coaching, live location, maintenance cues, and a driver app for logs and inspections, and that may later hand vehicle data to a dispatch or maintenance system through a documented API. The plans page groups that work into named packages rather than one undifferentiated GPS pin.

The Safety Premier package lists in-cab coaching, alerts, nudges, and a safety inbox. The Safety Enterprise package lists Risk detections: 30+ according to Samsara (2026), plus weather-risk visibility and coaching, training, and worker-safety tools. The Telematics Premier package lists live location and vehicle health, idle and fuel insight, and proactive maintenance planning. The Telematics Enterprise package adds AI insight on the fuel lifecycle, TMS integrations, and driver and dispatch route tools. Asset packages cover standard visibility and a higher tracking tier with diagnostics. AI usage is described as included with every paid license, with higher tiers for heavier reporting and coaching volume. The plans FAQ says the driver app covers ELD compliance, IFTA support, near-real-time hours alerts, and DVIR submission.

Implementation starts with the gateway and, if you bought video, the camera, then the driver app and the admin inbox. If another system will read vehicle data, the stats reference requires an API token with read access to vehicle statistics. The immobilizer state values on that reference include ignition_disabled. Treat a read of that value as information for a person. Do not let a downstream tool change immobilizer state or a duty status on its own. Test the location feed against the 30-day device log, including the instruction to keep paging while another page exists and to pause at least 5 seconds when it does not. Name the employee who may edit a log before go-live.

Limitations are real. There is no public price, so procurement cannot benchmark from the website. The pages opened do not spell out yard-move, personal-conveyance, or adverse-condition workflows, so a compliance-heavy carrier should make the seller demonstrate those exemption codes. The 50% customer figures on the plans page are not a promise for your fleet. A small operation that will only keep an electronic log, and will never open the safety inbox, is buying a wider platform than it will use.

Teletrac Navman for hours, inspections, and mixed assets

Best fit: a carrier or mixed fleet that wants hours of service, exemption status, DVIR, and maintenance on TN360, including video coaching, and that will document the new majority owner in the contract. The platform name on the current site is TN360. The sale did not rebrand the product out of existence.

The fleet software page lists real-time tracking, driver scorecards, video telematics, ELD workflows, DVIR and maintenance, workflow apps, IFTA reporting, and mixed-fleet devices. It also describes fuel-transaction insight and EV charging visibility. Named integrations on that page include Fleetio, Shipwell, and C.H. Robinson's Navisphere carrier platform. The ELD page adds an available-hours dashboard, suggested log edits, duty-status updates, and a view of drivers under FMCSA hours exemptions, including yard moves, personal conveyance, and adverse driving conditions. Drivers get rest-break alerts and a forecast tied to the 34-hour reset. DVIR time is recorded as on-duty time, and failed items are meant to reach the maintenance workflow. That page states a carrier must keep unidentified driving records for a Retention floor: 6 months according to Teletrac Navman (2026), and it dates mandatory ELD use for covered vehicles to December 16, 2019. It also says the IFTA view requires a Promiles integration, and it states that 24/7 customer support is part of the offer. Ask what 24/7 means in the order: phone, roadside, or portal only.

The fleet page's impact studies report an Idle-time reduction: 60% according to Teletrac Navman (2026), a 90% reduction in speeding events, and a 71% reduction in distracted-driving events. Those are the vendor's own studies. On that same page, the Griffin Waste Services story reports fuel and maintenance costs down by more than 10%, at least an hour of downtime removed per driver each day from geofence alerts, and more than $160,000 in annual savings. The Zevac story on that page reports zero at-fault accidents over two years. Use them as published claims to test in a reference call, not as your forecast. The ELD page also prints short named comments. Ask for a customer you can call.

Implementation is device install, the driver app or in-cab tablet, the hours dashboard, exemption rules, and the DVIR-to-shop path. If IFTA is in scope, budget the Promiles integration the page requires. If a second system needs fleet data, the marketing page confirms integration paths and does not replace a written export schedule. A developer portal did not load during this research, so do not assume a particular API host until the seller documents it. Log edits are sensitive. The ELD page says users can suggest edits and update duty status. A downstream tool should file a request, and a person should accept it. After the ownership change, implementation also includes the new contracting entity, the support contact, and a data-export clause that survives a later resale.

Limitations follow from the public record. There is no public price. The pages reviewed do not list a detection-count comparable to the 30+ figure on the other vendor's higher safety package, so do not assume parity because both sell cameras. A procurement rule that pauses vendors during a recent majority-owner change is a reason to slip the signature until assignment, price-hold, and support terms are in writing. A buyer who cannot add Promiles does not have the IFTA path that page describes.

What an idle week does to the fuel bill

Use this as a worked example, not as a promise from either vendor. A regional fleet of 40 trucks idles 1.5 hours per truck on a working day, and you assume 0.8 gallons per idle hour at $3.90 a gallon, so the day costs 40 × 1.5 × 0.8 × $3.90 = $187.20, and 250 working days cost $46,800. Cutting those idle hours by 25% leaves $11,700 a year on the same assumptions, which is 40 × 0.375 × 0.8 × $3.90 × 250. In that same week a reviewer can read the immobilizer value ignition_disabled on the Samsara vehicle stats snapshot before a supervisor allows the truck to stay parked or return to dispatch.

The gallon rate and the fuel price are scenario assumptions so the arithmetic is visible. They are not a published idle-burn rate from either vendor. Teletrac Navman's 60% idle figure is a separate, vendor-reported study result. Do not paste it into this table and call it your savings.

A proposed configuration from US Tech Automations takes a vehicle-stats export or API read, matches the vehicle, and opens one review item that shows the immobilizer state and the idle reading. A supervisor accepts or rejects the hold. Prerequisites are an API token limited to read vehicle statistics, a driver and vehicle roster, and a rule that no duty-status edit and no immobilizer change is sent until that person acts. This is a configurable design, not a live customer deployment and not a measured savings claim. The telematics product remains the system of record for the log and the camera. The workflow only moves the exception to the person who must decide.

When the handoff is built in Zapier, Make, or n8n

The real alternative for many fleets is not a second telematics brand. It is a Zapier, Make, or n8n scenario, or a small in-house script, that watches an email alert or a nightly file. Those tools can keep run histories, retries, error branches, and an audit trail when someone configures them. They do not arrive with your vehicle identities, your approvers, or your rule for a duplicate event. The buyer has to design and own observability, idempotency, escalation, access control, and maintenance of the scenario after the employee who built it leaves.

A fair build on that stack looks like this. The telematics alert or file lands in the tool. A filter checks vehicle identifier and event time. A retry runs if the maintenance system times out. An error branch writes the failed row to a mailbox. That is a legitimate design for a simple alert. It gets thin when two events for the same truck arrive an hour apart, when the API token is a shared admin login, and when nobody notices that the scenario has been paused for a week. The run history only helps if a person looks at it.

A proposed US Tech Automations design can set the idempotency key to the vehicle identifier plus the event time, route a failed run to a named inbox, and keep the approver list in the workflow rather than in a shared login. You still need the export or the API token, and a person still has to review the exception. The difference is that the review gate, the duplicate check, and the escalation path are configured as one design instead of as three scenarios one analyst remembers to maintain. It is still software you must permission and test. It does not remove the telematics vendor, and it does not create a savings number by itself.

US Tech Automations can be configured so a failed inspection file creates a maintenance hold and a compliance note, then stops. A maintenance lead reviews the defect and either releases the truck or orders the repair. Prerequisites are a shared vehicle identifier in the inspection file and the maintenance system, plus a person named to clear the hold. Nothing in this design replaces the electronic log. If the inspection file never leaves TN360 or the Samsara driver app, there is no input, and the vendor screen should stay the only screen.

Mistakes that survive the sales demo

Buyers lose the first contract year in a few repeatable ways. The list is the correction, not a scare story.

• Signing on a verbal per-truck number that never appears in the order. Both public prices are quote-based. The order is the price.

• Ignoring the July 2026 majority sale and letting the old Vontier entity name sit on a new Teletrac Navman agreement.

• Buying camera hardware and naming nobody to review events. The 30+ detections and the video scorecards both wait on a person.

• Treating vendor impact studies as your budget. The 90%, 71%, and 60% figures, and the 50% customer figures, are published claims. Ask for a reference and a baseline method.

• Turning on IFTA language without the Promiles integration the ELD page requires.

• Letting a script edit duty status or change an immobilizer. File the request. A person accepts it.

• Skipping the export test until the week you want to leave. Ask for a sample file during the pilot, while you still have leverage in the negotiation only in the ordinary sense of a contract you have not signed. Put the file format in the statement of work.

Checklist before anyone signs

Walk this list on a single call with each seller. Stop when an answer is missing.

• Contracting legal entity, and, for Teletrac Navman, how the July 2026 majority sale is reflected on the invoice.

• Per-asset fee, camera fee, install fee, and hardware ownership at the end of the term.

• Term length, vehicle-count changes, and the early-exit formula, in writing.

• Hours workflow you will actually use: forecasting, 34-hour reset, yard move, personal conveyance, adverse conditions, and who may edit a log.

• DVIR path into the shop, including who clears a defect before the truck is dispatched.

• IFTA path, including Promiles if you choose the TN360 page that requires it.

• Location update rate you are willing to live with, and the retention of video and logs.

• API token scope or nightly file, a sample export, and the vehicle identifier both systems will share.

• Named reviewers for coaching, log edits, and maintenance release, with hours set aside on their week.

• A pilot on a handful of trucks that includes one failed inspection and one after-hours movement, before the full install.

Frequently asked questions

When NOT to use US Tech Automations: the vendor inbox already reaches the right dispatcher, you have no API token or nightly file, or one spreadsheet is the whole operation and a Zapier, Make, or n8n scenario with retries is enough to watch one alert. In those cases the simpler tool wins because there is no second system that must accept the record, and adding a review layer only creates a queue nobody opens.

Did Teletrac Navman shut down or change its name?

No. The product still sells as Teletrac Navman and TN360. Vontier sold a majority stake to Respida Capital in a deal valued at $220 million, announced complete on July 6, 2026, with the business out of Vontier's continuing operations. Confirm the new contracting entity on your order.

Do Samsara or Teletrac Navman publish a per-vehicle price?

No. Both are quote-based as of the pages reviewed on October 12, 2026. Samsara's packages end in a pricing request. Teletrac Navman says the price depends on fleet size, assets, devices, features, and support. Reject any comparison that fills those blanks with an estimated dollar figure.

Which platform fits a compliance-heavy truck fleet?

Teletrac Navman's opened ELD pages show more of the hours workflow in public, including exemption status, the 34-hour reset, and a six-month retention statement for unidentified driving. Samsara's driver app publishes ELD, IFTA, hours alerts, and DVIR, and its higher safety package publishes 30+ risk detections. Demonstrate the exemption codes you use before you pick on brand.

Can either platform feed a dispatch or maintenance system we already run?

Yes, if you buy the integration or you take an export. Samsara publishes vehicle location and vehicle-stats feeds, including a read scope for vehicle statistics. Teletrac Navman names Fleetio, Shipwell, and C.H. Robinson on its fleet page. In both cases, map the vehicle identifier first and keep a person on any log edit or shop release.

How long should unidentified driving records be kept?

Teletrac Navman's ELD page says a carrier must retain unidentified driving records for at least six months and make them available to safety officials. Build that retention into the export and the filing cabinet you control, not only into the vendor screen. Ask Samsara's seller for the matching retention commitment in your order, because the pages opened for this comparison did not state that same six-month line.

Should a buyer wait because of the ownership change?

Wait only if your own procurement rules pause a vendor after a majority sale, or if the seller cannot name the contracting entity and the support terms. The product pages still offer TN360 and still take pricing requests. A buyer who is comfortable with the written assignment, the price hold, and the data-export clause does not gain accuracy by delaying on rumor. Samsara's package menu is a separate decision and was not the asset Vontier sold.

What to do with the two quotes

Score the two written quotes against the weights above. Give the points to the seller who demonstrated your hours exemptions, your inspection-to-shop path, your camera review routine, and a sample export. Withhold points for a verbal price. The public record supports a simple split: Samsara's opened pages are stronger on a counted safety-detection catalog, fuel and route packaging, and a documented vehicle data feed with an about-5-second on-vehicle location cadence. Teletrac Navman's opened pages are stronger on the hours dashboard, exemption tracking, DVIR linked to maintenance, mixed-fleet language, and a current product that has a new majority owner you must name in the contract.

Keep the telematics platform as the place the log, the video, and the inspection are stored. Add a second step only when a person outside that screen has to approve a hold or a repair. If that is your situation, see how US Tech Automations configures this as a proposed review path with an API or file prerequisite and a human release. If it is not, sign the telematics agreement that passed the checklist and staff the inbox you already have.