iTECH Focus: Tracking the Trailer

Vendors Say Returns Come from Boosting Fleet Capacity Without Adding New Trailers
Click here to write a Letter to the Editor.

railer tracking clearly would hold little value for fleet managers if they couldn’t sever the tractor-trailer umbilical without leaving the trailer a lifeless lump.

Throw a battery, and maybe a solar panel, onto the cargo box, install a GPS receiver, a transmitter, set the trailer free and you have trucking’s emerging technology of the hour: untethered trailer tracking.

At this point, finding the location of vehicles and persons with a GPS-enabled computer or cellphone is common currency in the transport world. But knowing where your tractors are is not the same as knowing where 20 or 20,000 of your trailers are.



“Everyone used to be truck- and driver-focused, but we’ve seen a big shift over the past 18 months towards tracking cargo and trailers,” said Roni Taylor, executive vice president of marketing for tracking provider SkyBitz Inc.

She and other suppliers expect 2005 to be the year that untethered trailer tracking comes into its own. Trailer power sources are reliable, the software is readily available, the suppliers are in the market for the long haul, and as happens when technology matures, prices may become more attractive to a wider variety of potential customers.

This article appeared in the February/March edition of TT's iTECH supplement. For the full story, see the Feb. 21 print edition of Transport Topics. Subscribe today.