How often SENT-GEO checks your truck's position in Poland

In brief: on our platform's data, 571 transports from 1 August to 21 September 2026, one transport's position is checked 212 times on average over 2.7 days of monitoring · one check in seven (13.7 %) comes back as "no stored location in the system" · the signal is lost not on the road but at the edges of the trip: 47 % of transports begin in silence, 40 % end in silence, only 7 % have a gap in the middle · monitoring starts the moment the declaration becomes active, not when the driver pulls out · a locator failure longer than an hour obliges the driver to stop (art. 10c ust. 1 of the SENT Act) · an inactive locator costs the carrier 10,000 zł and the driver 2,000 zł.

Poland's SENT system records the position of a monitored truck hundreds of times per trip. On our platform's data, across 571 transports from 1 August to 21 September 2026 the system made 121,122 position checks, 212 per transport on average, with monitoring lasting 2.7 days on average. One check in seven found no position at all, and almost always that happened at the start or the end of the transport, not somewhere on a Polish motorway.

When position monitoring starts and when it ends

Monitoring starts the moment the declaration in PUESC becomes active and lasts until it is closed. Not when the driver switches the locator on, and not when the truck moves. This is the main reason the driver and the system see two different trips.

SENT is Poland's system for monitoring the road carriage of sensitive goods: fuels, alcohol, tobacco, and since 2022 a growing list of foodstuffs. Every monitored transport must transmit its position throughout its time on Polish territory. For a carriage under SENT the duty sits in art. 10a ust. 1 of the SENT Act; for a non-EU carrier working under an RMPD declaration it sits in art. 28b ust. 5 of the Road Transport Act. The data source is the locator: the SENT GEO or e-TOLL PL app on the driver's phone, or an external GPS device whose number is written into the declaration. The data lands in the SENT-GEO subsystem, and that is where everyone who wants to know where the truck is goes to read it: the roadside inspector, the carrier, the platform that manages the declaration.

The driver switches the locator on before the carriage begins and off no earlier than at delivery or on leaving Poland (art. 10b of the SENT Act). Between those two moments every "no position" answer is recorded against the carrier, whether the truck is loading, queuing at the border or driving.

How many times a position is checked in one transport

On our platform's data, 212 checks per transport on average; half of all transports have up to 120 checks, one in ten more than 470. These figures describe monitoring from the carrier's side: how often Sigil asked SENT-GEO for the truck's position while the declaration was active. How often the inspection services look, the system does not disclose.

The gap between mean and median tells the story. A typical trip across Poland closes within one and a half to two days. But one in ten stays open for more than a week, and for that whole week the system expects a position. A declaration nobody closed after unloading is not "nothing happened"; it is seven days of "no location" answers.

What the system sees when the locator is silent

When the locator is not transmitting, SENT-GEO answers literally: "Nie można pobrać ostatniej zapisanej w GEO lokalizacji", "the last location stored in GEO cannot be retrieved". On our platform's data 13.7 % of checks ended this way, 16,579 out of 121,122. This is not a connection failure between us and PUESC; it is the system itself saying that at this moment it holds not a single point for this transport.

Does one such answer mean a fine? No. The fine is imposed for a transport during which data were not transmitted, not for a single check. But every such answer is recorded, and during an inspection these records are what builds the picture "the carrier failed to ensure transmission". The causes will have to be explained afterwards, in reply to the authority's summons, as in the case we analysed in the article on the Kraków court ruling on a GPS gap.

Where the signal is really lost

The signal is lost at the edges of the trip, not on the road. This is the most important finding in our data and it contradicts what carriers fear most.

Almost half of all transports start in silence. The declaration is filed, the number issued, the truck is still loading or waiting at the border, the locator is off or the app has no permission to use location in the background. To the system it all looks the same: transport active, no position.

Forty per cent end in silence. The driver has unloaded and closed the app; the dispatcher has not closed the declaration. Every hour until closure adds answers without a position.

Only 7 % have a gap while moving. Of those, gaps longer than an hour, the ones that already trigger the duty to stop, number fourteen in 571 transports. Not one exceeded twelve hours. Tunnels, poor coverage near the border and a dead phone battery happen, but they are not the main threat. The main threat is a "start journey" button pressed too late and a declaration closed too late.

How much silence is already a problem

One hour. If the locator failure lasts longer than an hour, the driver must stop without delay at the nearest car park or lay-by (art. 10c ust. 1 of the SENT Act) and not move until transmission resumes or the authority decides otherwise. The rule applies to RMPD carriages too.

Is the hour a "safe zone" in which a gap does not count? No. The hour is the threshold after which the driver has to be stationary. The gap itself, even a ten-minute one, is recorded in the system. In case II GSK 659/23 Poland's Supreme Administrative Court looked at gaps longer than an hour and quashed the fine because the driver's app showed every icon green and the authority never examined the causes. In case II GSK 1324/22 the gaps lasted 5 and 9.5 hours, the driver knew the locator was down and drove on; the fine stood. The difference was not the length of the gap but whether the driver knew and what he did.

The practical conclusion for a dispatcher: the gap must be seen before the hour is up. The driver watches the road, not the icon. So somebody other than the driver has to be watching the position during the trip.

What an inactive locator costs

The carrier 10,000 zł, the driver 2,000 zł, and the two fines do not exclude each other.

The carrier's fine does not depend on fault: the authority needs only the absence of data. Fault and circumstances matter at the second stage, when the authority decides whether to waive the fine (art. 22 ust. 3 of the SENT Act for SENT; for RMPD only art. 92c ust. 1 pkt 1 of the Road Transport Act, meaning circumstances beyond the carrier's control). A carrier from a country without an enforcement agreement with Poland pays a deposit at the roadside (art. 31 of the SENT Act, art. 94 ust. 3 of the Road Transport Act). The full table of fines with commentary is in the article on SENT and RMPD fines in 2026.

Where Sigil fits

Sigil asks SENT-GEO for the truck's position for as long as the RMPD declaration is active, shows it on a map in the declaration's record and warns the dispatcher when the system answers that there is no position. The history of checks stays with the declaration, so when the authority calls there is something to show: when the position was there, when it vanished and when it came back. The locator, the driver's app and closing the declaration remain on the carrier's side; Sigil shows what the system sees and cannot transmit a position on behalf of a locator that is switched off. Sigil does not handle SENT declarations; this concerns RMPD carriages only. How to build a declaration so that the locator number in it is the right one is covered in the CMR to RMPD field map.

Where the locator number comes from, when to switch it on and off and what to do in a failure longer than an hour is taken apart in What SENT-GEO demands of the carrier and the locator.

What to do

1. 1Switch the locator on before the declaration becomes active, not after leaving the depot. If the locator is an app, check that location permission is set to "always", not "while using".
2. 2Check that the locator number in the declaration matches the device in the truck. A different number means the system is waiting for data from a device that is not on this trip.
3. 3Watch the position in the system, not only in the driver's app. A green icon on the phone and an empty SENT-GEO answer happen at the same time; that was exactly the Kraków case.
4. 4Stop when there has been no position for more than an hour, and note the time and place. It is the driver's duty under art. 10c ust. 1, and for the carrier it is proof that the driver acted correctly.
5. 5Close the declaration immediately after unloading or leaving Poland. Every hour of an open declaration after the locator is off is an hour of "no position" answers.
6. 6Keep the position history at least until the period in which the authority may impose a fine has run out. App screenshots, tachograph data and the route from the carrier's own tracking system decided case III SA/Kr 289/26.

What not to do

• ✗Do not switch the locator on "once we're moving". The declaration is already active, and 47 % of transports in our data start with exactly this mistake.
• ✗Do not close the app straight after unloading if the declaration is still open. Close first, switch off second.
• ✗Do not treat the hour as a "permitted gap". The hour is the stopping threshold, not a zone in which the gap does not count.
• ✗Do not rely on the driver noticing the failure. He is driving; the dispatcher is the one who should see the position in the system.
• ✓One locator, one number in the declaration, switched on before the start and off after closure. That removes two of the three causes of silence.