Know where the diesel goes, truck by truck
Trakora fuel theft detection monitors diesel inside a vehicle's own tank, not tanks at a station. A fuel level sensor or CAN-bus feed is logged against the vehicle's position, drains and siphoning are separated from refuels and road sloshing, each refuel is reconciled against its receipt, and consumption is reported per vehicle, route, and driver.
Fuel theft detection at a glance
- What it monitors
- Fuel level in a vehicle's own tank / vehicle-fuel-telemetry
- How it reads
- Fuel level sensor in the tank, or the vehicle's CAN-bus feed
- What it detects
- Drains and siphoning, separated from refuels and road sloshing / fuel-theft-detection
- What it reconciles
- The refuel receipt or fuel card against the litres that entered the tank / refuel-reconciliation
- What it reports
- Litres per 100 km per vehicle, per route, per driver / consumption-analytics
- Requires
- The fleet module, plus core
- Industries
- Haulage, logistics, mining, oil and gas
- Billing
- TZS, TRA-EFD VAT invoice, support in English and Swahili
- Figures not yet published
- Sensor accuracy
- —
- Sampling interval
- —
- Minimum detectable drain
- —
- Alert latency
- —
- Calibration tolerance
- —
- Expected loss reduction
- —
Figures shown as — are not published. Every vendor in this market prints a percentage here; none of them measured it on your trucks. We will run a baseline on your own fleet during the pilot and the figures become yours.
Problems Tanzanian fleet operators bring us
Every fix below names a real feature in the fleet-fuel module — not a promise. The mono tag says which.
The truck did the same route it always does and used forty more litres than last month.
Consumption is tracked per vehicle, per route, and per driver, so a change shows up as a trend rather than as an argument. / consumption-analytics
Fuel disappears somewhere between the depot and Mbeya and nobody can say where.
Fuel level is logged against the vehicle's position, so a loss carries a place and a time, not just a shortfall. / vehicle-fuel-telemetry
The receipt says 300 litres and the tank does not look 300 litres fuller.
Each refuel is reconciled against the rise in the tank, so the receipt and the litres are two halves of one record. / refuel-reconciliation
We suspect a driver but we have nothing we could actually put in front of him.
A drain event carries its time, its location, and the shape of the level drop — a record that exists independently of anyone's account of the shift. / fuel-theft-detection
Every bump in the road sets off a fuel alert and we stopped reading them.
A drop has to hold and has to be inconsistent with the vehicle's movement before it escalates — sloshing on a rough road is not a theft. / fuel-theft-detection
We have no idea which of our thirty trucks is the expensive one.
Litres per 100 km per vehicle turns thirty trucks into a sorted list. / consumption-analytics
How Trakora fuel theft detection works
From calibration to a sorted consumption list, in five steps.
Fit and calibrate
A fuel level sensor goes in the tank, or the vehicle's own CAN-bus fuel data is read, and the sensor is calibrated against known volumes so a reading maps to litres.
Log level with position
Level is recorded alongside the vehicle's location and movement from the fleet module, so every reading has a where and a when. / vehicle-fuel-telemetry
Separate the drops
A refuel is a step up, consumption is a slope, a drain is a step down that the journey does not explain, and sloshing is noise that does not hold. / fuel-theft-detection
Match the receipt
Each refuel event is reconciled against the fuel document or card transaction for that vehicle. / refuel-reconciliation
Report the fleet
Litres per 100 km per vehicle, per route, and per driver, so the exception is visible without reading thirty graphs. / consumption-analytics
Sampling interval, drain threshold, and the minimum detectable drop are set per vehicle at calibration: — (figure to be confirmed).
What you get with the fleet fuel module
Four capabilities, each a real manifest feature. No fifth.
Vehicle fuel telemetry
Fuel level in the vehicle's own tank, logged against the position and movement the fleet module already provides. Every reading has a place and a time.
/ vehicle-fuel-telemetryTheft and drain detection
A drop that holds and that the journey does not explain is raised as an event with its time, its location, and the shape of the fall — not as a bare alarm.
/ fuel-theft-detectionRefuel reconciliation
The litres on the receipt or the fuel card against the litres that entered the tank. The gap between them is the number nobody currently checks.
/ refuel-reconciliationConsumption analytics
Litres per 100 km per vehicle, per route, and per driver, so thirty trucks become a sorted list and the outlier is obvious.
/ consumption-analyticsFour capabilities, and only four. The vehicles, trips, geofences, and the live map come from the fleet module underneath — fuel theft detection adds fuel to a fleet you are already tracking.
What fuel theft detection cannot do
It cannot name a thief
It records that a tank lost fuel it should not have, at a time and a place. Who was standing there is a question for your own investigation, your gate records, and the driver's own account. A page that implies the sensor identifies a person is setting up a confrontation it cannot support.
It cannot tell a slow drain from bad efficiency
A tank that loses a little every day looks like a thirsty engine, and a thirsty engine looks like a slow drain. Consumption analytics narrow it; only inspection settles it.
It is only as good as its calibration
A sensor that has not been calibrated against known volumes for that tank reports a shape, not litres. Recalibration after a tank change, a tank repair, or a sensor refit is not optional.
It cannot see fuel that never reached the tank
Short-filling at the pump, a fuel card used for a vehicle that was not there, and a doctored receipt are reconciliation problems, not level problems — which is exactly why refuel reconciliation exists as a separate feature.
It is not station tank monitoring
Fuel in fixed tanks at a station or depot is the fuel management module. This module is diesel inside a moving vehicle.
Sensor accuracy, sampling interval, minimum detectable drain, and expected loss reduction: — (figure to be confirmed). Published as — until measured on real vehicles.
What the fuel console shows
The operator view — fuel events on real Tanzanian corridors, with the litre columns deliberately blank. Realistic data, not a stock photo.
| Vehicle | Route | Event | Where | When | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| T 412 KCA | Dar → Mbeya | REFUEL (— L) | Morogoro | 06:40 EAT | Matched to receipt |
| T 412 KCA | Dar → Mbeya | SUSPECTED DRAIN (— L) | Mikumi | 02:14 EAT | Open |
| T 889 DGH | Dar → Mwanza | REFUEL (— L) | Singida | 11:20 EAT | No receipt found |
| MC 456 DEF | Dar → DRC | SLOSHING (not escalated) | Kigoma road | 15:02 EAT | Dismissed |
| T 233 BKL | Arusha local | SENSOR UNCALIBRATED | Arusha yard | 09:00 EAT | Action needed |
| T 771 MWZ | Mwanza local | SENSOR OFFLINE | — | last seen 4h 12m ago | Unread |
Fuel level trace — T 412 KCA, Dar → Mbeya
24 hours EAT · no y-axis values shown — the shapes carry the meaning, not the litres
Read the four shapes as text
- Suspected drain — a sharp step down at 02:14 EAT that the parked vehicle does not explain. Open event.
- Refuel — a step up at 06:40 EAT near Morogoro. Reconciled against a receipt.
- Consumption — the long downward slope through the driving day. Normal.
- Sloshing — a small wobble near 15:02 EAT on the Kigoma road that does not hold. Not escalated.
A sloshing event is shown and dismissed, not hidden — you can see what the system chose not to escalate.
A refuel with no matching receipt is its own status, distinct from a drain.
An uncalibrated or offline sensor is called out, because a quiet sensor and a healthy tank look identical if you do not.
Recommended fuel monitoring hardware
The kit a fleet-fuel deployment runs on. These are device classes — no confirmed models are published for this module yet.
- Capacitive fuel level sensor
- CAN-bus reader
- GPS tracking unit (fleet module)
- Data SIM (Vodacom / Halotel)
- Anti-siphon tank cap
Sensor accuracy, calibration tolerance, and install time per vehicle: — (figure to be confirmed).
Fleet fuel plans and pricing
Fuel theft detection is priced per vehicle per month in TZS, on top of the fleet module it requires, with a one-off sensor and calibration cost per vehicle. There is no published fleet-fuel tier yet — talk to sales for a scoped quote.
Per-vehicle price and install cost: — (figure to be confirmed). No "from" price, no payback claim is shown until it is sourced.
Frequently asked questions
How does Trakora tell a theft from normal consumption?
Consumption is a slope and a drain is a step down that the journey does not explain. A drop must hold and must be inconsistent with the vehicle's movement before it escalates.
Will it alert every time the truck hits a pothole?
No. Sloshing does not hold, and events that do not meet the threshold are shown as dismissed rather than escalated, so you can see what the system chose not to raise.
How accurate is the sensor?
We do not publish an accuracy figure. It depends on the sensor fitted and on the calibration done against your own tank, and we put the measured specification on your quote rather than an average on this page.
Do I need the fleet module as well?
Yes. Fuel theft detection requires the fleet module, which supplies the vehicles, the trips, and the positions the fuel data is logged against.
Can it prove who stole the fuel?
No. It records that fuel left the tank at a time and a place, in a record that exists independently of anyone's account of the shift. Identifying a person is your own investigation.
Is this the same as monitoring my petrol station tanks?
No, that is the fuel management module. This one is fuel inside vehicle tanks.
What does it cost?
There is no published tier. It is quoted per vehicle per month in TZS on top of the fleet module, with a one-off sensor and calibration cost per vehicle.
Explore fuel theft detection
Find out what your fleet is actually losing
Tell us how many vehicles, which routes, and whether you already track them. We will scope the sensors and run a baseline on your own trucks.