Samsara data export and retention: what fleet history can a company license?

What does a Samsara account hold, and how far back does fleet history go?

A Samsara account holds a fleet's telematics: GPS trips and routes, engine and vehicle diagnostics, driver hours, dispatch and delivery events, safety events such as harsh braking, and coaching actions. How far back the history reaches depends on the company's plan, data retention terms and how long it has been a customer, so the honest first answer is "ask the fleet manager."

For a partner, the signal is a long-running operator whose records show not just where vehicles went but what happened and what was done about it. Vendor retention periods and export options change, so this page makes no claims about specific day counts. The company's admin can read the current terms from its own account and contract.

Which Samsara records are most useful?

Usefulness comes from sequences with outcomes, not raw location pings.

The question of value is covered more broadly in Is fleet telematics data valuable for AI training?. This page is about the system itself and the practical checks.

What does a retention and export check look like?

An operations manager or fleet admin can answer most of this in an afternoon, and none of it requires sending data to anyone.

1. Identify the account administrator and the contract owner; they may be different people.
2. Note when the company first deployed devices and whether the fleet was migrated from another telematics provider.
3. Read the retention terms for location, event and video data from the company's agreement or account documentation.
4. List which record types the company actually uses: trips, dispatch, safety, coaching, maintenance, compliance.
5. Ask how the company pulls data today: built-in reports, scheduled exports or API integrations feeding a data warehouse.
6. Check whether history was copied to a warehouse, spreadsheet archive or other system, since the copy may reach further back than the vendor platform does.
7. Record years, volumes by year and record types in a metadata-only list using the data inventory builder.

Video is typically the largest item and may follow different retention terms from trips and events, so treat it as a separate line in the inventory.

What are the driver personal data limits?

Fleet records are full of information about people: named drivers, locations tied to individuals, behavior scores and, if cameras are installed, images and audio. That shapes what can be licensed at all.

• Driver names, IDs and employee numbers usually need removal or replacement.
• Location trails of identifiable people can reveal home addresses and routines.
• In-cab video and audio carry the strictest handling and are often excluded.
• Employment and discipline records connected to coaching are sensitive.
• Customer delivery addresses can identify consumers.

This is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Confirm with your own counsel before acting, and note that state rules on employee monitoring and biometrics vary. SourceX works through rights and de-identification with the company before any work begins; nothing is delivered without an executed agreement and the company's authorization. Records that are mainly consumer personal data with no licensing basis are a red flag.

Safer assets tend to be vehicle-level and route-level records with driver identifiers removed, plus aggregate or event-type data. The company decides what it is comfortable licensing. The related ServiceNow incident, change and knowledge records page shows how another system with personal data is framed.

Which companies show the right signals?

Telematics fits operators for whom vehicles are the business or a major cost: logistics and distribution, field services, construction trades, waste, utilities contractors, last-mile delivery and equipment rental. A quick fleet check keeps it practical.

• The fleet has run several years, with dispatch, safety and maintenance records, ideally also copied to a warehouse or archive.
• The company, not a customer, controls the data, and driver and customer details can be separated.
• Someone who can authorize a license is within your reach.
• That person would consider an exclusive AI-training license for an agreed term.

The company still needs 50+ full-time employees at peak (contractors excluded) and several years of documented operations. Many fleets run owner-operators or contracted drivers, who do not count toward headcount. Fleet data is one system among many; strong companies also hold dispatch software, accounting, CRM and email history, as the who qualifies page describes.

Where do partners meet these companies?

The Xero record-keeping guide is a good reference for the closing-business version of the same conversation, and the Salesloft and Outreach pages show how a commercial team's history is described.

What to say to a fleet or operations executive

How do partner rewards work?

Partners earn 25% of the eligible platform fees SourceX actually collects from the referred company's licensing deals, capped at $100,000 cumulative per referred company. Rewards become payable only after the buyer pays and SourceX receives its fee, and no reward is guaranteed. The reward is a share of SourceX's fee and is never deducted from what the company receives. Read the program terms for details.

When fleet data is not the angle

• The fleet is small or vehicles are mostly owner-operator.
• Telematics history was reset at a provider switch and the old data is gone.
• Records are mainly driver video and biometrics.
• The data belongs to customers who own the vehicles or loads.
• Nobody can say who administers the account or holds the contract.

Next step

Ask one logistics or field-services owner how long their fleet platform has been running and whether history is stored elsewhere. If it is long and deep, register as a partner and make the introduction, or send the sponsor to sourcex.si/apply with your referral link.