Who wrote this: we're The Big Head, an app studio in Edmonton. We're building FleetDock for this category, but it isn't released yet — so it isn't in the list below. Everything here is an app you can actually download today.
If you run trailers - five of them or five hundred - the right app depends less on the brand than on which half of the problem you actually have: knowing where a trailer is, or controlling what happens to it once it is inside your yard. Almost no app on the market does both, and this guide is organised around that split.
Every app below was checked against its live App Store listing before it earned a place here. Features come from what the listing and the vendor actually say, not from what the category implies - several of these apps never mention trailers at all, and where that is true we say so. Anything we could not confirm on a live listing was left out rather than padded in.
All ten are free downloads, and in this category the app is never the product: each one is a client for a paid vendor platform, and six of the ten also need hardware installed on the asset. None of these vendors publish pricing on their App Store listing, so treat every entry as a sales conversation rather than an install.
One structural note before the list: the four apps that need no hardware are workflow and paperwork tools, not live-location tools. That trade-off shapes almost every decision below.
At a glance
| App | Best for | Pricing |
|---|---|---|
| Samsara Fleet | Mid-to-large fleets already running Samsara gateways and sensors that want trailer location, cargo and reefer status from a manager's phone. | Subscription |
| Motive Fleet | Trucking operators who want ELD compliance, dash cams and asset tracking consolidated into a single manager-side app. | Subscription |
| FleetLocate TrailerView | Drivers who lose time hunting for one specific trailer in a large yard - the most narrowly trailer-focused listing of the ten. | Subscription |
| ZuzHQ Yard Management | Gate guards, spotters and yard jockeys who need to run a live trucking yard from a phone instead of a desktop TMS. | Subscription |
| DataDocks | Dock managers and facility supervisors who want to run the appointment book and fight detention from the floor rather than a desk. | Subscription |
| Fleetio Go - Fleet Management | Fleets whose genuine pain is maintenance and inspection paperwork rather than live trailer location, and who want the most battle-tested option here. | Subscription |
| Whip Around - DVIR | Operators who need clean, defensible pre-trip and post-trip inspection records without buying into a full telematics stack. | Subscription |
| Tenna - Mixed Fleet Operations | Contractors running a mixed fleet of heavy equipment and vehicles across multiple sites, especially where signal is unreliable. | Subscription |
| LoneStar Tracking | Small operators who mainly want GPS units on assets, a simple live map, and a recovery path when something goes missing. | Subscription |
| Powerfleet Unity | Existing Powerfleet or MiX Telematics customers who need mobile access to an account they already hold - realistically, few others. | Subscription |
The apps in detail
Samsara Fleet
- Best for
- Mid-to-large fleets already running Samsara gateways and sensors that want trailer location, cargo and reefer status from a manager's phone.
- Highlights
- Real-time vehicle locations, diagnostics and sensor data across tracked assets
- Real-time alerts and in-app incident investigation
- Hours of Service monitoring for driver compliance
- Review safety events and download HD dash cam footage
- Pricing
- Subscription
- Watch out
- It maps assets but has no yard layer - trailers are pins, not spots, moves or dwell clocks, and the word yard never appears on the listing. It also requires hardware on every trailer, and the listing itself warns that background location tracking can reduce battery life.
Motive Fleet
- Best for
- Trucking operators who want ELD compliance, dash cams and asset tracking consolidated into a single manager-side app.
- Highlights
- Vehicles, assets and driver location on one real-time GPS map
- Fleet maintenance monitoring driven by telematics data
- ELD and driver-log compliance monitoring
- Real-time dash cam images for visibility into driver trips and safety
- Pricing
- Subscription
- Watch out
- There is no dedicated yard-move or spot-assignment workflow. Reviewers also report auto-renewing annual contracts that are difficult to exit, alongside app-side complaints: missing notifications, driver locations that fail to refresh, and freezing.
FleetLocate TrailerView
- Best for
- Drivers who lose time hunting for one specific trailer in a large yard - the most narrowly trailer-focused listing of the ten.
- Highlights
- Trailer location on a map, aimed squarely at cutting yard search time
- Remote cargo status so drivers know a trailer is fit for pickup
- Driver-facing view rather than a general fleet dashboard
- Pricing
- Subscription
- Watch out
- It is a viewer, not a management tool - you can find a trailer but cannot dispatch a move on it. The small number of published reviews mention cargo status going unresponsive and login credential failures, and it ships updates far less often than the major platforms.
ZuzHQ Yard Management
- Best for
- Gate guards, spotters and yard jockeys who need to run a live trucking yard from a phone instead of a desktop TMS.
- Highlights
- Gate flow capturing driver, tractor, trailer and seal in one pass, with hot-list alerts
- Yard moves as a mobile task queue for spotters and jockeys
- Live trailer visibility with dwell time and status filtering
- Driver self check-in from a phone or yard kiosk, plus a dock appointment board
- Pricing
- Subscription
- Watch out
- Brand new, with no user track record to judge reliability against. It is iPhone-only with no iPad version, no offline mode is mentioned anywhere in the listing - which matters in metal buildings and back lots - and pricing is only available by contacting the vendor.
DataDocks
- Best for
- Dock managers and facility supervisors who want to run the appointment book and fight detention from the floor rather than a desk.
- Highlights
- Manage appointment schedules with intuitive date navigation
- Detention time monitoring to expose dock inefficiency
- One-tap appointment status updates and instant overbooking alerts
- Multi-facility switching and multi-language support
- Pricing
- Subscription
- Watch out
- It is a dock-appointment companion, not a yard system: no trailer inventory and no move dispatch. The listing never mentions trailers, and yard appears only once, in passing. It is also new enough to have no meaningful user track record.
Fleetio Go - Fleet Management
- Best for
- Fleets whose genuine pain is maintenance and inspection paperwork rather than live trailer location, and who want the most battle-tested option here.
- Highlights
- Submit DVIR inspections and report issues from the phone
- Mobile work orders with line items
- Barcode scanning for instant vehicle and equipment lookup
- Fuel-up logging, photos and documents, and multiple fleets in one app
- Pricing
- Subscription
- Watch out
- There is no yard or live-location layer at all - this is an asset-maintenance system. Reviewers report inspections refreshing and losing progress midway, saved signatures dropping after logout, and limited work-order editing on mobile.
Whip Around - DVIR
- Best for
- Operators who need clean, defensible pre-trip and post-trip inspection records without buying into a full telematics stack.
- Highlights
- Pre-trip and post-trip DVIR and eDVIR inspection processes
- Create, assign and track work orders
- Capture defects during inspections and assign them for resolution
- Diagnostic Trouble Code (DTC) fault code access and parts inventory
- Pricing
- Subscription
- Watch out
- Compliance-first rather than operations-first: it will tell you an asset failed inspection but not where it is sitting or who moves it next. There is no live location and no yard functionality, and the listing does not mention trailers specifically.
Tenna - Mixed Fleet Operations
- Best for
- Contractors running a mixed fleet of heavy equipment and vehicles across multiple sites, especially where signal is unreliable.
- Highlights
- Live views of the entire fleet, sites and geofences
- An explicit offline mode - the strongest offline story of the ten
- Field scanning via in-app scanner or BLE beacon detection
- Maintenance requests with photos and voice memos, plus resource reservation and dispatch
- Pricing
- Subscription
- Watch out
- Built for construction, not trucking - there is no gate check-in, no dock appointments and no detention tracking, and the vocabulary throughout is equipment-centric. The listing never mentions trailers, and it depends on Tenna tags or trackers being fitted to assets.
LoneStar Tracking
- Best for
- Small operators who mainly want GPS units on assets, a simple live map, and a recovery path when something goes missing.
- Highlights
- Track, monitor and manage a fleet in real time
- Driver score cards
- Stolen-asset location
- Pricing
- Subscription
- Watch out
- The listing is genuinely thin - real-time tracking, scorecards and stolen-asset location is close to the whole of it, with no inspections, no moves and no yard logic. Reviewers say the app has not kept up with iOS updates, logs itself out repeatedly, and suffers push-notification glitches.
Powerfleet Unity
- Best for
- Existing Powerfleet or MiX Telematics customers who need mobile access to an account they already hold - realistically, few others.
- Highlights
- Vehicles, assets and geofences monitored in real time in one place
- Assign a driver or find nearby assets in a single tap
- Asset history showing where assets have been and what events occurred
- Pricing
- Subscription
- Watch out
- Reviewers describe a rough experience: accounts that sign in to the browser version but fail in the app, support that stayed unresponsive for months, bills that did not match the negotiated quote, and hardware units that arrived defective. It also offers no yard, inspection or move workflow.
What's still missing
No app in this category credibly does all four things a working yard needs - trailer location, spot assignment, dwell accountability and gate capture - and the four options that need no hardware either skip yard work entirely or have no track record yet. That leaves the operator with 5 to 50 trailers who wants to run moves offline, on phones the crew already carries, with nothing built for them.
Common questions
What is the difference between trailer tracking and yard management?
Tracking answers where is it - a pin on a map, almost always powered by hardware bolted to the trailer. Yard management answers who moves it, to which spot, and how long it has been sitting there. Samsara, Motive, FleetLocate, LoneStar and Powerfleet do the first. ZuzHQ is the only app here doing the second, with DataDocks covering the dock-appointment slice. Nothing on this list does both convincingly.
Do I need hardware on every trailer?
For six of the ten, yes. Samsara, Motive, FleetLocate, Tenna, LoneStar and Powerfleet all depend on installed gateways, tags or trackers. ZuzHQ, DataDocks, Fleetio Go and Whip Around run on phones alone - but those four are workflow and paperwork tools rather than live-location tools, so the trade-off is real.
Are any of these apps actually free?
Every app here is a free download, but none is free to use. Each is a client for a paid vendor platform, and several also require paid hardware. None of these vendors publish pricing on their App Store listing, so expect a sales conversation before you have a working account.
Which of these work when the yard has no signal?
Tenna is the only one that states an explicit offline mode in its listing, and Fleetio has referenced offline inspection handling in its release notes. Everything else assumes connectivity. That is a genuine operational risk: gate check-in failing on a weak signal inside a metal building means a queue of idling trucks.
I only need DVIR and inspections - what should I look at?
Whip Around or Fleetio Go. Whip Around is the more compliance-focused of the two, with pre-trip and post-trip inspections, defect assignment and DTC fault codes. Fleetio Go wraps inspections into broader maintenance, work orders and fuel history. Neither will tell you where an asset physically is.
Which is the best pick for a small fleet?
It depends which problem you have. To find trailers, and if you are willing to fit hardware, FleetLocate TrailerView is the most narrowly focused. For inspection records with no hardware at all, Whip Around. To run gate and yard moves from a phone, ZuzHQ is the only real option on the store today - with the honest caveat that it is new and unproven.