A study released today by Motorola says that almost 50 percent of the IT executives surveyed said the adoption of global positioning system applications can reduce the amount of travel that corporations need their fleets of trucks and cars to make by about 231.2 miles a week. That might not seem like much by with gas at over $4.00 a gallon on average, Motorola estimates that GPS technologies are saving companies about $51,582 in annual savings.

Motorola also estimates that there are more than a million carriers using fleets of trucks in North America so it calculates that industry-wide annual fuel savings from GPS technologies could reach as high as $53 billion.

Admittedly, the survey of 255 North American IT executives made on Motorola's behalf by e-Rewards, an organization that specializes in building on-line panels for research purposes, is a little self-serving. Motorola wants companies to buy new offerings such as the MC75 Enterprise Digital Assistant that are GPS enabled.

But whatever the actual number, it's pretty clear that truck drivers get lost all the time looking for destinations on unfamiliar routes. So giving them tools to get from one destination to another faster only makes sense, especially when you add the cost of paying people by the hour on top of the cost of fueling the truck or car.

The only real question is whether you need to equip these people with a special industrial class smart phone like the Motorola MC75 or whether existing consumer grade devices will do the trick. Regardless of the device, the savings from taking advantages of GPS technologies can be had. The only real question is if the environment that the device is going to be used in will require something more rugged than a standard smart phone. Given that market research companies such as VDC estimate that the rugged handheld market was worth about $2.8 billion in 2007 with expected annual growth rates of about 7 to 8 percent, the answer is yes for a lot of companies. A recent survey conducted by CIO Insight also finds that mobility in the enterprise is rapidly becoming a strategic tools for providing better customer service and increasing productivity, while an eWeek study find that devices like the MC75 that are based on the Windows Mobile operating system are becoming more popular in part because its comparatively easier to integrate them with corporate applications based on Microsoft.net technologies.

Regardless of how companies arrive at the fuel savings, GPS technologies are clearly taking their place alongside other technologies applications that can now be brought to bear to try and keep fuel prices under control.