How to View Vehicle History in Samsara
Quick Summary
Real-time tracking tells you where a vehicle is right now, but historical data answers a different set of questions: where did it go yesterday, how long did it idle at a job site, and who was driving it during a specific trip. Samsara stores this information across several dedicated reports, each built for a slightly different purpose, from reconstructing a single trip to reviewing a driver’s mileage over an entire month. This guide walks through where to find that history and how to use it effectively.
Since historical reporting is one part of a much larger fleet management system, it helps to understand the platform it belongs to. Samsara – GPS Fleet Tracking Software provides the dashboard, hardware, and reporting tools that generate this historical data in the first place, and it offers useful context before working through the specific reports covered in this article. With that framing established, let’s look at how vehicle history actually works in Samsara.
Where Does Vehicle History Live in Samsara?
What is the main report for reconstructing past trips?
The Trip History Report is the primary tool for viewing where a vehicle has been. It uses tracking data from a Vehicle Gateway or Asset Gateway to reconstruct the movement of a fleet’s vehicles, and it can be accessed by navigating to Reports > Activity > Trip History. For each recorded trip, the report displays the start and end location, the vehicle and trailer involved, the driver’s name, and the total distance traveled.
How does Samsara define what counts as a trip?
Not every moment a vehicle moves counts as a distinct trip in the report. By default, a trip begins once a vehicle reaches a speed of at least 5 mph, or whatever custom activity threshold your organization has set. It ends once the vehicle has traveled for at least two minutes and then drops below 5 mph for five consecutive minutes, or when it crosses a state or national border. Additionally, the report only surfaces trips considered meaningful, meaning they last longer than five minutes, which keeps short stops and parking lot maneuvers from cluttering the results. This threshold-based definition matters because it directly shapes how many discrete trips show up for a given vehicle on a busy day, and adjusting the activity threshold can be worthwhile for fleets whose vehicles frequently make very short, low-speed movements that would otherwise fragment the report.
How do you narrow down a large report?
Fleets running dozens or hundreds of vehicles need a way to filter this data down to something usable. The Trip History Report supports filtering by tags or asset type directly, and selecting More Filters opens additional options like asset name, driver, or tachograph card number for European fleets. A date selector narrows the report to a specific time range, and a dedicated search field allows filtering by location, which is useful when investigating whether any vehicle passed through a specific area on a given day.
What Other Reports Show Vehicle Activity Over Time?
What does the Start/Stop Report add that Trip History doesn’t?
While Trip History focuses on individual trips, the Start/Stop Report aggregates that data into broader statistics. It’s available for both Vehicle Gateway and Asset Gateway devices and provides a fleet-wide summary of trip counts, route schedule adherence, and total distance by driver. The report offers two distinct views depending on the time frame selected, summarized below.
| View | What It Shows |
|---|---|
| Single-day view | Detailed metrics for the day, including odometer readings and activity timestamps |
| Multi-day view | Summary metrics for each driver-vehicle pair, aggregated across the selected period |
Selecting a specific driver-vehicle pair from the multi-day view opens a daily breakdown similar to the single-day report, giving you a way to zoom in without switching reports entirely.
How do you review overall asset or driver performance?
The Activity Report takes a wider lens, summarizing vehicle and driver activity for purposes like performance review or retracing movement during an investigation. It’s found under Reports > Activity > Activity Summary, and it separates data into an Asset tab and a Driver tab, so you can pivot between viewing a specific truck’s history or a specific driver’s overall activity. Selecting an individual asset or driver from either tab opens more detailed live activity data for that entity specifically.
Is there a difference between odometer-based and GPS-based distance reporting?
Yes, and it’s worth knowing which version you’re looking at. Samsara introduced a standardized, odometer-based distance metric to improve accuracy over the original GPS-based calculation. The GPS-based version, still accessible under the report’s additional options, calculates a trip’s starting odometer using the value recorded at the start of the first trip within a selected time frame, while the newer standardized version instead uses the odometer value from the very start of the time frame itself. Organizations comparing historical reports against older analyses may want to reference the older GPS-based version specifically, so past figures stay consistent.
How Do You View Trip Images and Video History?
What visual documentation gets captured automatically?
Beyond location and distance data, Samsara can capture visual documentation of a trip as it happens. By default, road-facing images upload to a vehicle’s Trip History and Trip Timeline at both the start and end of every trip. If a Samsara Dash Cam is installed and enabled, it can also capture inward-facing images and periodic stills throughout the trip, building a fuller visual record of what happened along the way.
How do you access this trip timeline?
Viewing trip imagery follows a short path through the dashboard:
- Navigate to Safety, then select Cameras.
- Click the image associated with the dash cam for the vehicle you want to review.
- Narrow results by searching for a device, filtering by tags, or filtering by vehicle status.
- Select the specific trip from the list to open its Trip Timeline.
Can you retrieve full video, not just still images?
Yes, for completed trips. Selecting Retrieve Video below the trip map, or choosing View Safety Event for a flagged incident, pulls the corresponding footage for review. It’s worth noting that video retrieval isn’t available for trips still in progress, so if a vehicle is currently en route, you’ll only see the still images captured so far until the trip finishes and the full timeline becomes available.
How Do You Track Historical Mileage and Business Trips?
How does Samsara support mileage reporting for reimbursement or tax purposes?
Fleets that need to document mileage for reimbursement, tax deductions, or general recordkeeping can rely on the Business Mileage Tracking feature, which connects directly to Trip History data. Drivers annotate completed trips using the Trip Log in the Samsara Driver App, and administrators can then view and export those annotated trips through the Trip History Report for recordkeeping.
What determines the accuracy of the reported mileage?
Accuracy here depends largely on the vehicle’s hardware. When available, Samsara uses ECU-reported odometer readings for the most precise start and end mileage figures. For vehicles where that data isn’t accessible, the system instead relies on a manually entered odometer reading combined with GPS data to estimate distance traveled. Fleet managers can update a vehicle’s manual odometer reading directly through the app when needed, which helps keep mileage reports accurate over time even on vehicles without full ECU integration.
How long do drivers have to review and edit a trip’s details?
Drivers can access and annotate trips from the last 30 days directly in the Trip Log, or seven days for fleets operating under German regulations. Once a trip is annotated and saved, it remains editable in the Reviewed section for the same window, giving drivers a reasonable amount of time to correct a trip purpose or add missing details before the record is finalized for reporting purposes.
What Should You Know About Accessing These Reports?
Do all dashboard users see the same historical reports?
No. Access to each report depends on the permissions assigned to a user’s role. Most historical reports require either a Full Admin role or a custom role with specific view or write permissions for that report category. The dashboard simply hides any report that a user does not have permission to access. This keeps sensitive historical data, such as detailed driver activity, limited to the people who actually need it.
Can historical reports be exported or scheduled?
Yes, and this is useful for recurring reviews or audits. Most reports, including Trip History, Activity, and Start/Stop, support exporting to CSV or XLSX format for offline analysis. Many reports also support automatic email delivery, which saves administrators from manually pulling the same report every week. Administrators can also save reports as page favorites to return to frequently used views more quickly. For fleets that need to share historical data with outside parties, such as an insurance provider following an incident or an accounting team handling mileage reimbursements, exporting to a standard file format also makes it easier to hand off the relevant records without granting that party direct dashboard access.
Conclusions
Vehicle history in Samsara isn’t limited to a single screen; it’s spread across several purpose-built reports, from Trip History for reconstructing individual routes to the Activity Report for broader performance review and Business Mileage Tracking for reimbursement records. Understanding which report answers which question saves time, especially when investigating a specific incident or preparing recurring compliance documentation. For a fuller picture of how historical data connects to real-time tracking, safety, and compliance across the platform, Samsara – GPS Fleet Tracking Software remains a valuable resource alongside the reporting tools covered in this guide.
Frequently Asked Questions
The exact retention period depends on your organization’s plan and settings, but the Trip History Report is designed for both recent review and longer-term investigation, with a date selector that lets you narrow or widen the reporting window as needed. For mileage-specific annotation through the Driver App, drivers have a 30-day window to review and edit trips, or seven days for German customers.
No. Video retrieval is only available once a trip has been completed. While a vehicle is en route, the Trip Timeline shows still images captured periodically, but full video footage becomes accessible only after the trip finishes.
Samsara updated the Activity Report to use a standardized, odometer-based distance metric for improved accuracy. The original GPS-based version remains available under the report’s additional options menu, which is useful if you need to compare current data against historical reports generated before the update.
