Over the last few years, many large trucking carriers have installed driver-facing in-cab cameras, despite the vocal outcry from their employees.
Many truckers complained that the in-cab cameras were an invasion of privacy, but were assured by their companies (and the camera manufacturers) that the cameras provided significant benefits, with little to no downside.
The largest producer of driver-facing cameras was California based Lytx (formerly known as DriveCam).
According to Fortune.com, Lytx added more than 102,000 new camera systems, for more than 365 different trucking companies in 2015. The largest addition was for Phoenix-based Swift Transportation — which added the Lytx camera systems in more than 6,000 company trucks.
In total, Lytx signed more than $200 million in new contracts in 2015, more than an 80% increase from the year prior.
In addition to installing the driver-facing camera systems, Lynx also makes money by charging companies for services on a subscription basis.
How did the company celebrate their record year? By cashing out, that’s how.
On February 19th, 2016, Lytx officially announced that they were being sold to a Chicago-based private equity firm for a cash payment of $500 million dollars.
There are many possible reasons why the company agreed to sell out. Maybe they foresaw challenges from driver opposition, or difficulty in keeping up their astronomical growth; or perhaps they received an offer that was just too good to refuse.
What’s clear, however, is that (at least in the short-term) they are the biggest winner in the industry wide adoption of driver-facing cameras.
