Ask a fleet manager what they think of a three-year telematics contract. You’ll get a groan before you get a real answer. For years, that groan was just part of the job. There are multi-year agreements and upfront hardware costs. There are also tiered pricing structures, automatic renewals, and cancellation fees tied to what was left on the balance. Sign it or go without GPS tracking.
It’s a model that works well for vendors, since locked-in customers mean predictable revenue. But fleets don’t stay the same size year-round, and a lot of companies have quietly been paying for equipment they don’t need anymore.
One Step GPS decided that deal wasn’t worth keeping. Founded in 2017 in San Fernando, California, the company went the other direction with no contracts, prices posted instead of negotiated, and hardware included instead of sold. This model has held up and has actually grown.
One Step GPS has landed on the Inc. 5000 five times, first appearing at No. 199 in 2021. In 2025, Berg Insight’s Fleet Management in North America report placed the company among the top 15 commercial telematics providers by installed base in the U.S. and Canada.
The Problem With the Old Default
The logic makes sense on paper. Vendors want steady income, so they lock customers in for years. But the problem is that fleets don’t always hold steady.
Construction and landscaping crews scale up and down with the season. HVAC and plumbing outfits swap vehicles in and out as jobs demand it. Sign a multi-year agreement anyway, and you end up paying for devices that just sit in trucks that aren’t even running.
There are cancellation fees on whatever is left and no way to drop a device you don’t need. There always seem to be price hikes at renewal time. Operators have soured on all of it, which is a big reason month-to-month plans have gained ground. If the service is bad, a customer can leave right away instead of waiting out a contract.
A Founder Who Lived the Problem
Ryan Dale, who founded One Step GPS, didn’t come up through enterprise software. He came from fleet operations, using commercial telematics products before he ever built one. That meant signing multi-year agreements, covering upfront hardware costs, and living with support gaps common across the industry, all from the customer’s side of the table.
That’s what shaped the company’s approach. Rather than start with a standard enterprise contract and adapt customers to its terms, Dale built the contract around what he needed as a customer: few restrictions, clearer costs, and hardware that didn’t come with a large bill attached.
Three Rules It Broke
One Step GPS’s business model comes down to three decisions that set the company apart from most of its competitors.
Contract-Free: There are no multi-year agreements and no minimum terms. Every plan runs month-to-month, so there’s no fixed-term contract to renew. Clients can leave any time without paying a penalty.
Transparent Pricing: Costs are published, not negotiated. $13.95 a month per vehicle for GPS tracking, roughly $7 per driver for compliance tools like ELD and DVIR. And $29.95 per vehicle for AI dashcams with GPS already built in.
Included Hardware: The devices needed to run the service come with a lifetime warranty and are part of the subscription, not a separate purchase. There are no upfront hardware bills and no extra charges if a unit fails.
On their own, none of those is unheard of, but together, these policies form the business model rather than serving as add-ons to the conventional long-term contract.
Why It’s Holding Up
Plenty of telematics vendors offer some version of a no-contract plan now. Most still charge more for it, still want money upfront, or quietly cut features on the flexible tier. One Step GPS’s plan carries none of those conditions, which means retaining customers depends on the product and services, rather than the terms of the agreement.
You can see it in how customers talk about the company. Reviews on Capterra and G2 lean heavily on service quality. Buyers across the industry keep citing flexibility and transparent pricing as reasons they’d switch providers in the first place. For One Step GPS specifically, reviewers often bring up reliability and ease of use.
If you run a construction crew or a field service fleet, that flexibility stops being a nice extra. It is the difference between paying for a device sitting idle in a parked truck and only paying for what’s actually on the road. Businesses in these categories make up a substantial share of One Step GPS’s customer base for exactly that reason. That flexibility has accompanied the company’s growth and five appearances in the Inc. 5000. Fleet managers weigh contract length about as heavily as price or features these days. What One Step GPS’s growth suggests is that customer freedom can be the business model, not just a line in the pitch deck.
