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Transportation, warehouse and fleet

How to find and size your Samsara data.

Find how many trips, safety events and other records Samsara holds, and how its API, data connectors and terms shape a full-history export.

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Find how much you have

  1. Decide what a record means for your fleet. Samsara holds trips, GPS and diagnostic readings, safety events, Hours of Service logs, driver vehicle inspection reports (DVIRs), forms and documents, route stops and camera media. Pick the one a buyer would value most, usually trips, put its count in the size box and list the others in the description.

  2. Ask whoever administers Samsara for an API token. In the dashboard, click the gear icon for Settings, scroll to API Tokens and choose Add an API Token. Name it for this job, give it read scopes only (for example Read Trips, Read Vehicles, Read Safety Events & Scores, Read DVIRs and, for Hours of Service logs, Read ELD Compliance Settings (US)) and limit it by tag only if part of the fleet is in scope. Samsara shows the token once, so copy it straight into the script that will use it and keep it out of email and chat.

  3. A developer counts trips with Get Trips Stream. It asks for up to 50 asset IDs per call, so list your vehicles first and loop in groups of 50. Set startTime to a date before your first install, endTime to now and queryBy to tripStartTime, follow endCursor while hasNextPage is true, and count the trips. Samsara limits this endpoint to 5 requests a second.

  4. Count any other record type you plan to license the same way, using Get Safety Events Stream, Stream DVIRs and Get HOS logs. Each takes a time window and returns a page at a time. Stream DVIRs matches on when each DVIR was last updated, not when it was filed, so set the window to cover your whole history and count distinct DVIR IDs. Samsara says Hours of Service data from the Driver App can arrive late, and advises waiting a couple of days before pulling recent logs.

  5. Do not try to count telemetry points. GPS and diagnostic readings arrive as a stream of values per vehicle, so report the number of vehicles and the years covered in the description instead.

  6. To find the start date, run the trips count in yearly windows from the earliest plausible year and stop at the first window that returns results, then note the earliest trip start time. Samsara cursors expire after 30 days, so finish a long pull in one stretch.

What to put on your intake

Your intake has five boxes for each system. Here is what goes in each one for Samsara.

What does it hold?
Vehicle and driver records, trips, GPS and diagnostic readings, safety events and scores, Hours of Service logs, inspections (DVIRs), routes and stops, forms and documents, and camera media. Say which you use day to day and the year each one started.
Data types
Structured records for trips, events and logs. Add Text only for free-text dispatch messages or form answers you want to license. Leave Image and Video off, because camera media is excluded by default.
How big is it?
Choose Records and say in the description what one record is, for example trips. Add the vehicle count and, if you know them, counts for safety events, Hours of Service logs and DVIRs.
Verified or estimated
Verified when a script counted every trip over your whole history through the API. Estimated when you scaled up from a sample, a short window or a fleet average.
Records start
The earliest trip or event date for each record type. If you moved to Samsara from another telematics provider, the older history stays with that provider, so add it as its own system.

Exporting the full history

If a buyer licenses your records, this is how the full history comes out of Samsara.

  1. A full-history export happens only after a license is signed and the scope is agreed: which record types, which years, which vehicles or tags, and whether camera media is in.

  2. Back-fill through the API. Samsara describes its Historical stats endpoint as the tool for back-filling and ad hoc queries of GPS and diagnostic data. It needs a start and end time, takes up to 3 stat types per call, groups the results by vehicle and pages them. For ongoing sync Samsara points to its feed endpoint, which it says is less likely to miss data when a device had connectivity trouble.

  3. Trips, safety events, DVIRs and Hours of Service logs each have their own endpoint. Samsara limits each API token to 150 requests a second and each organization to 200, with tighter limits on individual endpoints, and it answers 429 with a Retry-After header when a script goes over, which the script should respect.

  4. Data connectors. Samsara lists a Power BI connector, a Kafka streaming connector, streaming to Google Cloud Pub/Sub, Azure Event Hubs and AWS MSK, and pipeline connectors in its App Marketplace such as Fivetran and Precog. Samsara describes the streaming options as real-time delivery, so treat them as forward-looking. The Power BI connector returns up to 6 months per request, though Samsara says you can ask for data as far back as you have been a customer. We did not find documentation on how far the pipeline connectors back-fill, so ask your Samsara contact.

  5. Camera media. Samsara's media endpoint lists uploaded video and still images with a maximum query range of one day, up to 20 vehicles per call, and download links that expire in 8 hours. That makes bulk footage impractical, so media stays out unless a specific package is agreed.

  6. Under the license, driver names and IDs, vehicle identifiers such as plates and VINs, and addresses and place names tied to customers or homes are removed before delivery.

We only ask for an export after you sign a license and agree the scope. Sizing your data for the intake never needs one.

Limits to know

  • This guide rests on Samsara's developer documentation, legal terms and privacy policy. Samsara's help-center articles on dashboard reports redirected to its sign-in page when we checked, so we do not list dashboard menu paths. Ask your administrator which dashboard reports cover each record type and what date range each allows.
  • We did not find a published retention schedule in the pages we could read. Samsara's terms say customer data stored beyond its data retention policies may be deleted immediately, so ask your Samsara contact which periods apply to each record type and whether anyone on your account changed them.
  • Do not rely on a grace period. Samsara's Master Terms say that if a license ends and is not renewed, the applicable customer data may be immediately deleted. The 30-day retrieval period we found in its Data Protection Addendum belongs to the EU Data Act switching process. Export before you cancel or let a subscription lapse.
  • Samsara's terms say you may export customer data at any time during the term through the dashboard export features or the API, and also that some information may not be exportable either way.
  • A new API token starts with a default set of read scopes already selected, including Drivers, Users and Vehicle Trips. Untick what you do not need, use one token per job and delete it when you finish. If you regenerate a token, the old one stops working.
  • A token limited to certain tags can only see data in those tags. Create the counting token for the whole organization unless you mean to size only part of the fleet.
  • Get Trips Stream needs asset IDs, up to 50 per call, and compares its time range to either the update time or the trip start time depending on queryBy. The default is the update time, so set queryBy to tripStartTime when you want trips by date.
  • Historical stats accepts at most 3 stat types per call and returns the results grouped by vehicle, so a long history across a large fleet arrives as many pages.
  • Camera ID, Samsara's face-recognition feature for driver assignment, is described by Samsara as its only face-recognition feature, and customers are responsible for obtaining any consents drivers must give. Samsara keeps driver-specific Camera ID data until 90 days after the driver is deactivated or Camera ID is switched off. Face-recognition data is not licensed.

This guide isn't legal advice. Check your contracts, and any recording-consent rules that apply, with your own lawyer.

Why buyers value it

Samsara records the physical side of an operation: where each vehicle went and when, how it was driven, what inspections found and how long drivers were on duty. Because devices generate most of it, the data is consistent from day to day and carries real timestamps.

For AI buyers building dispatch, routing, fleet safety and maintenance tools, several years of trips and events show how real routes compare with plans, whether safety events recur after coaching, and how inspection findings turn into repairs. The value rises with unbroken history and with links between records, such as a safety event tied to its trip.

What stays private

Driver names, driver and employee IDs, phone numbers, license numbers and photos are removed or replaced before delivery under the license, along with vehicle identifiers such as license plates and VINs. Street addresses, saved place names and geofence labels that point to a customer, a home or a job site are removed or replaced too, as are exact coordinates near homes and trip start and end points.

Camera video, still images and audio are excluded by default, and face-recognition data used to assign drivers is not licensed. Coaching notes and scores are licensed only after names are removed. Your logins, API tokens, user list and integration settings are not part of the license.

Common questions

Samsara's Master Terms of Service say the customer owns the customer data, and they give Samsara a non-exclusive license to use it to operate and improve its products. Your own order form or reseller contract may differ, so read the version you signed. This is not legal advice.

For a counted total and a full-history pull, usually yes, or a data-pipeline tool your team already uses. Samsara's terms say you can also export through the dashboard, and your administrator can show you which reports exist. If you cannot get a number, tell us what you can see and we will help you scope an estimate.

Camera media is excluded by default. For Camera ID, Samsara's biometric policy puts the duty to obtain any consents drivers must give on the customer, so tell us on your intake whether drivers were notified about cameras and whether Camera ID was ever on. Face-recognition data is not part of a package.

No. Buyers license de-identified operating records. Driver identities, customer addresses, place names and exact coordinates near homes come out before delivery, and what remains is the pattern of the work and its outcomes.

Sources

Vendor documentation, checked . Screens and plans change, so if a step looks different in your account, check with Samsara.

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