Home›Resources›GPS Tracking Statistics›Asset Tracking

Asset Tracking Statistics (2026)

Last updated: July 2026. Figures on this page come from Precedence Research, Kroll, the National Retail Federation, NICB/NER, the Auburn University RFID Lab, ARA, AEM, and Verizon Connect, and are reviewed and updated annually.

20+ asset tracking statistics, every figure cited to its original source.

Most companies can tell you what they paid for their equipment. Far fewer can tell you where all of it is right now. Kroll's fixed-asset advisory practice estimates that 10–30% of the items on a typical fixed-asset register are "ghost assets": things the books say exist but that can't actually be found. Meanwhile, the global asset tracking market is projected to reach $30.11 billion in 2026, on its way to more than $106 billion by 2035 (Precedence Research).

This page collects the asset tracking numbers that matter to business readers: market growth, ghost assets, retail shrink, inventory accuracy before and after item-level tracking, and the theft exposure carried by rental and construction equipment. Every figure is cited to a named organization, including Precedence Research, Kroll, the National Retail Federation, the Auburn University RFID Lab, the American Rental Association, AEM, and NICB/NER.

It's one spoke of a larger dataset. For fleet, theft, and ROI numbers across the whole industry, see our full GPS tracking statistics roundup. Where a figure is dated or comes from a source we couldn't independently re-verify, we say so in plain language.

How Big Is the Asset Tracking Market?

The short answer: large, and compounding fast. Analysts track asset tracking as its own market, separate from vehicle telematics, and the growth curve reflects how much untracked equipment is still out there.

The global asset tracking market is projected to grow from $26.18 billion in 2025 to $30.11 billion in 2026. That's roughly $4 billion of new spend in a single year, driven by companies moving beyond vehicles to tag trailers, containers, tools, and non-powered equipment.
Source: Precedence Research, Asset Tracking Market (2025)

By 2035, the market is forecast to reach $106.19 billion, a 15.03% compound annual growth rate. A market that more than triples in nine years signals that asset tracking is following the same adoption arc vehicle GPS did a decade earlier: from niche tool to standard operating practice.
Source: Precedence Research, Asset Tracking Market (2025)

Year	Global Asset Tracking Market	Notes
2025	$26.18 billion	Base year
2026	$30.11 billion	Projected
2035	$106.19 billion	Projected, 15.03% CAGR

Source: Precedence Research, Asset Tracking Market (2025)

What Are Ghost Assets, and How Common Are They?

A ghost asset is an item that still appears on the fixed-asset register but is physically missing, unusable, or long gone: sold, scrapped, stolen, or simply lost. Companies keep paying for ghosts through insurance premiums, property taxes, and depreciation on things that no longer exist. The most-cited figures on the problem come from Kroll's fixed-asset advisory work.

Ghost assets make up 10–30% of a typical fixed-asset register, according to Kroll's analysis. Kroll, an advisory firm that performs fixed-asset audits, reports that between one in ten and one in three recorded assets can't be physically verified. At the high end, a company with $10 million on its register could be carrying $3 million in phantom line items.
Source: Kroll, Invisible Risks, Measurable Returns: The Fixed Asset Register

Up to 65% of fixed-asset records are incomplete or inaccurate in some way, per the same Kroll analysis. Even records for assets that do exist often carry wrong locations, wrong custodians, or outdated condition data. That means the register can't answer the operational question tracking exists to answer: where is this thing, and can I use it today?
Source: Kroll, Invisible Risks, Measurable Returns: The Fixed Asset Register

Both figures are Kroll's own estimates from its advisory practice rather than a public survey dataset, so treat them as an experienced auditor's range, not a census. Still, the direction is consistent with what the shrink and inventory-accuracy data below show: paper records drift away from physical reality unless something continuously reconciles the two.

How Much Does Shrink and Inventory Loss Cost?

Retail shrink is the clearest publicly measured version of the same disease: the gap between what the records say you have and what's actually on the shelf. The National Retail Federation's National Retail Security Survey is the benchmark study, and its 2023 edition remains the last full survey published.

US retail shrink reached $112.1 billion in fiscal 2022. That figure, from the NRF's 2023 National Retail Security Survey (the most recent full edition), covers losses from theft, fraud, damage, and administrative error. It's the total cost of inventory that existed on paper but never made it to a sale.
Source: NRF, National Retail Security Survey (2023)

The average shrink rate rose to 1.6% of sales, up from 1.4% the year before. Two-tenths of a percent sounds small until you apply it to revenue: for a $50 million retailer, that increase alone is another $100,000 in annual loss. Shrink is a percentage problem that compounds with scale.
Source: NRF, National Retail Security Survey (2023)

Shrink and ghost assets are two views of one failure mode. Retailers measure the gap in inventory; asset-heavy businesses carry it silently on the fixed-asset register. In both cases, the losses persist because nobody is continuously comparing records against physical reality.

What Does Accurate Tracking Actually Change?

The best-controlled public data on tracking accuracy comes from retail RFID studies, and the before-and-after gap is dramatic. The mechanism transfers directly to GPS asset tracking: item-level identity plus automated location reads, instead of manual counts and tribal knowledge.

69% of retail orders processed without RFID contained data errors; with item-level RFID, order accuracy hit 99.9%. That's the headline result of Project Zipper, a supply-chain study by the Auburn University RFID Lab and GS1 US that audited real brand-to-retailer shipments. Nearly seven in ten untagged orders had some discrepancy between what was recorded and what was shipped.
Source: Auburn University RFID Lab & GS1 US, Project Zipper (2018)

The Auburn RFID Lab has also published figures putting typical retail inventory accuracy at roughly 63–65% before item-level tagging, rising to 95% or better after. This range comes from the lab's own whitepaper rather than the audited Project Zipper dataset, so treat it as directional. Even so, it matches the pattern: manual records are wrong about a third of the time, and automated identification closes most of that gap.
Source: Auburn University RFID Lab whitepaper, via Auburn RFID Lab & GS1 US coverage (2018)

For non-powered assets in the field, the GPS equivalent of item-level tagging is a battery-powered tracker that reports position on a schedule, no vehicle wiring required. The principle is identical: the record updates itself, so the register stops drifting from reality.

How Exposed Are Rental and Construction Equipment Fleets?

Equipment-heavy businesses face the ghost-asset problem plus an active adversary: thieves. The rental industry's growth means more high-value assets living outside a locked yard, and the recovery data for stolen equipment is grim compared with vehicles. You can track this class of asset with dedicated equipment and asset trackers that don't depend on a vehicle's power.

US equipment and tool rental revenue is forecast to grow 3.6% in 2026 to $83.5 billion. The American Rental Association's May 2026 update shows an industry whose entire business model is assets in other people's hands, which makes location and status data an operating requirement rather than a nice-to-have.
Source: American Rental Association, forecast update via OPE+ (2026)

Construction equipment theft costs an estimated $300 million to $1 billion per year in the US. That's the long-standing National Equipment Register/NICB estimate, and it excludes stolen tools, materials, and the indirect costs of rental replacements and schedule delays.
Source: NER/NICB, via ConstructConnect

Fewer than 25% of stolen construction equipment items are ever recovered. Compare that with passenger vehicles: NICB has reported that more than 85% of stolen passenger vehicles are recovered, roughly a third of them within a day. Equipment lacks the title, registration, and plate infrastructure that makes cars traceable, so unmarked, untracked machines simply disappear.
Source: NER via ConstructConnect; NICB 2023 Vehicle Theft Trends Report

In the last full NICB/NER count (2014), 11,625 heavy equipment thefts were reported, and only 23% of stolen machines were recovered. That's roughly 1,000 thefts a month in the most recent granular public dataset. NICB/NER stopped publishing detailed annual equipment theft reports after 2016, which is why the field still leans on these figures.
Source: NICB/NER, 2014 Heavy Equipment Theft Report (2015)

Theft isn't the only leak. Equipment that's present but running unproductively burns money too, and telematics data has put numbers on it.

10–30% of construction equipment fuel is burned in nonproductive idling. The Association of Equipment Manufacturers reports that up to a third of a machine's fuel can go to engines running with no work being done, an invisible cost until telematics makes idle hours visible.
Source: AEM, How Telematics Helps Optimize Construction Equipment Efficiency

Telematics-based idle management cuts idling 10–15% on average; one fleet cut weekly fuel use from 30,000 to 24,000 gallons, saving about $25,000 per week. AEM's case figures show what happens when idle data becomes a managed metric. At that rate, the tracked fleet's savings paid for the tracking many times over within the first year.
Source: AEM, How Telematics Helps Optimize Construction Equipment Efficiency

What Results Do Companies Report After Adopting Tracking?

Adoption surveys in the tracking space skew toward vehicle fleets, but the reported outcomes explain why the asset tracking market is growing at 15% a year: companies that measure their operations find money in them. Verizon Connect's annual fleet technology research is the most consistent multi-year series.

Reported accident-cost savings among fleet technology users doubled from 11% in 2021 to 22% in 2025. Verizon Connect's trend data shows the payoff from tracking compounding as companies learn to act on the data, not just collect it.
Source: Verizon Connect, Fleet Technology Trends Report (2025)

47% of fleets using tracking technology achieved positive ROI in under one year. Nearly half of adopters in Verizon Connect's survey recouped their investment within twelve months. For asset-heavy operations, the math usually turns on found equipment, recovered theft losses, and fewer emergency rentals rather than fuel alone.
Source: Verizon Connect, Fleet Technology Trends Report (2025)

Fleets using video plus tracking reported 49% fewer harsh driving events. The same Verizon Connect research ties measurement to behavior change: what gets tracked gets managed, whether the asset is a truck, a trailer, or a generator on a jobsite.
Source: Verizon Connect, Fleet Technology Trends Report (2025)

Related: GPS tracking ROI statistics

Frequently Asked Questions

How big is the asset tracking market in 2026?

The global asset tracking market is projected at $30.11 billion in 2026, up from $26.18 billion in 2025, according to Precedence Research. The same forecast puts the market at $106.19 billion by 2035, a 15.03% compound annual growth rate, as tracking spreads from vehicles to trailers, tools, and non-powered equipment.

What percentage of fixed assets are ghost assets?

Kroll's fixed-asset advisory practice estimates that 10–30% of items on a typical fixed-asset register are ghost assets: recorded on the books but physically missing or unusable. Kroll's analysis also found that up to 65% of fixed-asset records are incomplete or inaccurate, which is why physical audits routinely surprise finance teams.

How much does inventory shrink cost US retailers?

US retail shrink totaled $112.1 billion in fiscal 2022, per the NRF's 2023 National Retail Security Survey, the last full edition published. The average shrink rate climbed to 1.6% of sales from 1.4% the prior year, covering losses from theft, fraud, damage, and administrative error.

Does item-level tracking really improve accuracy?

Yes, and the measured gap is large. The Auburn University RFID Lab and GS1 US found that 69% of retail orders processed without RFID contained data errors, while item-level RFID delivered 99.9% order accuracy. The same automated-identification principle drives GPS asset tracking for equipment in the field.

How much stolen equipment is recovered?

Fewer than 25% of stolen construction equipment items are recovered, per NER figures cited by ConstructConnect; in the last full NICB/NER count (2014), the recovery rate was 23%. NICB has reported that more than 85% of stolen passenger vehicles are recovered, so equipment owners face a far worse baseline without tracking.

How fast does asset tracking pay for itself?

Often within a year. Verizon Connect's fleet technology research found 47% of tracking users achieved positive ROI in under twelve months. On the equipment side, AEM documents one fleet that cut weekly fuel from 30,000 to 24,000 gallons through telematics idle management, about $25,000 in savings per week.

Sources & Methodology

Every statistic on this page was verified against its original publisher in July 2026 and is reviewed annually. Where a source is dated (the 2014 NICB/NER equipment theft count, the NRF's 2023 survey) or is a publisher's own estimate (Kroll's ghost-asset range, Auburn's whitepaper accuracy figures), we label it as such in the text rather than presenting it as current-year data. Market forecasts are attributed to the issuing analyst firm and marked as projections.