A fleet operating system is one platform on which a fleet runs its in-cab apps and devices, linking its vehicles, equipment and sites. Without it, a fleet buys a tracking box from one company, a logbook from another and a scanner app from a third. Each has its own login and its own screen. A fleet operating system gives all of them one place to run.
In the cab, the platform runs on a tablet or an in-cab device. Apps from several companies, such as navigation, a logbook and a delivery-scanning app, are installed on it. In the cloud, one dashboard manages all the devices and apps. This follows the pattern of device, app and cloud explained in IoT architecture.
The platforms were built for long-haul trucking in the United States, where a driver spends days in one cab and the company supplies a tablet for it. So the example in the diagram is American, and this page says so. Indian fleets work differently. Most Indian trucks have no fixed tablet, and the drivers of delivery fleets use a company app on their own phones. Large Indian logistics companies manage those phones with unified endpoint management and their own apps. The idea of one platform for many apps is the same, but the hardware is a phone, not a tablet.
Here is a typical case of why a fleet needs the platform. A tablet is stolen from a parked truck. Without the platform, it holds the company's logins, customer addresses and driver records, and nobody can lock it. With the platform, the fleet manager marks that tablet as lost in the cloud dashboard. It locks and wipes itself the next time it connects, and the manager installs the same apps on a replacement from the same dashboard.
The platform also manages the devices themselves, in the way a company manages employees' laptops. It connects to handheld tools such as a rugged scanner, which a driver uses to scan parcels. It is part of fleet management software, and it relies on the telematics device for vehicle data. See also fleet management.