Immobilise a vehicle
Fleetola can cut the fuel to a tracked vehicle from wherever you are. It is the most serious action in the product, so it is wrapped in deliberate checks: only the owner can send it, a typed reason is required, and the button refuses until a fuel-cut relay is confirmed. Tracking is an optional paid module, switched on per account - contact us to add it to your plan. Without it none of this appears.
What Cut fuel actually does
The tracker opens its fuel-cut relay. The relay engages once the vehicle is doing under 20 km/h - a moving car is not stopped dead, it cuts out as it slows - and it will not restart until you press Restore. The renter is not notified.
Immobilise a vehicle
- Open Tracking and click the vehicle.
- On the Commands tab, click Cut fuel.
- Type why. The reason is recorded against your account in the vehicle's command log and cannot be edited - an immobilisation with no justification on record is indefensible later.
- Confirm. The badge shows Cut sent, and turns red to Cut only when the tracker itself confirms the relay engaged - never off the button press.
- Restore reverses it. No reason is asked for - restoring is the safe direction. It is logged all the same.
Where to find it: Tracking → a vehicle → Commands
Owner-only, both ways
Only the account owner can immobilise or restore. Stopping a car is too serious to hand to every login, and restore is held just as tightly: if any team member could restore, one could quietly undo your immobilisation of a stolen vehicle.
Why it says Not fitted
A tracker alone cannot stop a car - a fuel-cut relay must be physically wired into the vehicle. A tracker without one still accepts the command, reports success, and the car keeps driving. Nothing in the device reports whether that wiring exists, so Fleetola refuses to send the cut until you confirm the relay yourself on the vehicle's Device tab. Your confirmation is the record - give it only when a relay is actually installed.
Where to find it: Tracking → a vehicle → Device → Fuel-cut relay
The car is offline - is it immobilised?
No. A cut sent to an offline tracker is queued: it runs when the tracker reconnects, and until then the vehicle is not immobilised. Fleetola tells you which happened - delivered to a connected device, or queued - and an offline car is the normal state of a car being recovered, so read the answer before you act on it.
Tip: Queued is not immobilised, and even delivered is not stopped. The only proof the relay engaged is the red Cut badge, reported back by the tracker itself.
When to reach for it
Recovering a stolen or unreturned vehicle, and contracts that have stopped paying. Nothing else - it strands whoever is driving. A moving car is safe to cut: the relay waits until the car slows under 20 km/h.
Related guides
- GPS tracking for your fleet - A live map of your fleet: what the paid tracking module includes and needs.
- Fit and connect a tracker - Fit a GPS tracker, point it at the server, and get its first report.