In February 2025 the Gleaner reported that vehicle theft had risen 92 percent: 115 vehicles stolen between 1 January and 8 February, compared with 60 in the same weeks the year before. By April, the total for the first three months of the year was 474 vehicles worth J$904.8 million. Insurers said plainly that prices would rise as a result.
If you run vehicles in Kingston, Montego Bay or along the north coast, you did not need the headline to tell you this. You needed the answer to a narrower question: when one of your vehicles moves at 2am, how long before someone notices?
Getting A Vehicle Back Is All About Speed
There is a very short window to recover a stolen vehicle. A vehicle reported stolen within ten minutes, with a live location, can usually be found. The same vehicle reported at 7am when the yard opens becomes a claim, an excess payment, a rented replacement, and a headache at renewal time.
The gap between "we noticed" and "we did something" is the single most expensive number in Jamaican fleet security, and almost nobody measures it.
Set this up this week
Draw a virtual boundary (called a geofence) around every yard and depot. Set an alert for any movement outside working hours. Send that alert to a phone someone actually answers at night. That is one evening's work, and it can save you a fortune the first time it goes off.
Fuel Prices Move Weekly, Your Habits Do Not
Petrojam's wholesale price for regular petrol was J$154.42 per litre on 15 October 2025, falling to J$151.36 by 23 October — an eight-month low after three straight weekly price cuts. Diesel was around J$163.25.
You cannot control weekly price changes. You can control how many litres you burn to get a job done.
The Jamaican fleets that make real fuel savings do three simple things: they check every fuel card purchase against where the vehicle actually was, they set a clear limit on how long an engine can idle, and they stop quietly paying for private trips they never agreed to.
The Roads Themselves
Mandela Highway is a constant trouble spot; a single broken-down crane caused pile-ups lasting days in October 2024, and repair work on the same road was abandoned after workers were disrupted. Marcus Garvey Drive near Tinson Pen regularly becomes impossible to drive through in heavy rain.
Then there is Hurricane Beryl. On 3 July 2024, the storm caused an estimated J$10.25 billion of damage to main roads, according to the National Works Agency, a figure later revised upward. A government planning body (PIOJ) published a full report on the damage.
| Road | The recurring problem | What better information changes |
|---|---|---|
| Mandela Highway | Crashes causing multi-hour delays | Rerouting drivers in real time and giving customers honest arrival times |
| Marcus Garvey Drive | Flooding in heavy rain | Wet-season route rules instead of guessing on the day |
| Constant Spring Road | Peak-hour traffic jams | Planning jobs around the time of day, not out of habit |
| Highway 2000 | Toll cost versus time saved | A clear decision each trip, backed by real travel times |
Road Safety Is Finally Improving
The Island Traffic Authority expects 388 road deaths for 2024, the first time the total has been under 400 since 2018. Speeding caused 87 of them, according to the National Road Safety Council, which is still pushing for more speed cameras that mail out tickets automatically. A road safety survey covering 1,000km of Jamaican roads, funded by the Caribbean Development Bank, began in December 2024.
For a fleet, automatic speed cameras mean one simple thing: the ticket arrives whether or not you were watching. Fleets that coach drivers using their own speed records now will not be caught off guard by stricter enforcement later.
Insurance, And What Actually Keeps The Price Down
GK General, Guardian General and Advantage General all sell business vehicle insurance here. Columnist Cedric Stephens has argued in the Gleaner that tracking driver data can cut crashes in Jamaica, and that is the honest reason it helps: not a discount for having a device fitted, but fewer crashes, and so fewer claims on your record.
What actually protects your renewal price:
- A written, dated process for coaching drivers, showing improvement over time.
- Proven ability to recover a stolen vehicle, not just a promise that you can.
- A record of how well you keep up with servicing that you can print out.
- Video footage that shows who was at fault quickly, instead of a dispute dragging on.
What Good Looks Like In Jamaica
The Jamaica Urban Transit Company runs 204 low-emission buses every day and has tracked their location automatically for years. The Island Traffic Authority checks vehicle roadworthiness under the Road Traffic Act 2018. The tools for keeping fleets accountable already exist in this market. Most private fleet owners simply have not connected their own vehicles to them yet.
Start with the three numbers that change fastest: minutes to notice after-hours movement, litres of fuel used per job, and the percentage of jobs finished on time. Get those three numbers visible, and the theft, fuel and insurance problems all get easier to manage in the same few months.
Sources
- · Jamaica Gleaner, 'Motor vehicle larceny up 92 per cent', February 2025
- · Jamaica Gleaner, Q1 2025 vehicle theft value, April 2025
- · Island Traffic Authority / Jamaica Observer, road fatality projection, December 2024
- · Petrojam ex-refinery price schedule, October 2025
- · National Works Agency, Hurricane Beryl road damage estimate, July 2024
