As Asset Tracking Evolves, Use Cases and Benefits Increase
CITT recently spoke with Jonas Schneider, CCLP, Sales Director at Blackberry Radar, to learn more about asset tracking technology
Anyone familiar with the classic 2000 film, “Dude, Where’s My Car”, even those that don’t work in logistics, will understand the benefits of asset tracking. For people who work in transportation and logistics, where questions about the whereabouts of assets like trailers, containers, flatbeds, tankers, ISO-tanks or chassis can result in costly delays or missed shipments, the importance is even clearer.
To learn more about the evolution of asset tracking technology and how it can help transportation companies make better use of time and money, CITT recently spoke with Jonas Schneider, CCLP, Sales Director at Blackberry Radar. A subsidiary of Waterloo’s Blackberry, Blackberry Radar has emerged as a leader in state-of-the-art asset tracking devices that can solve common tracking challenges, and help companies optimize expenditures.
Much more than “Where’s my trailer?”
“Asset tracking is a technology that's been around for a long, long time”, Schneider said. “But what we've learned in the last few years has become ever more apparent - fleets need to answer for a lot more than just, ‘Where's my trailer?’. Where we’re at right now, is trucking companies, private fleets, dedicated fleets, they’re all looking for different ways to save money. Asset tracking technology can assist there, by helping them figure out how to utilize their equipment more effectively.”
Effective equipment management
The way asset tracking technology can do that, is by providing answers to a host of questions that can impact a company’s operations. More than a way to locate items, the technology is proving its worth as an equipment management solution. One that offers meaningful insights that can help companies understand how to optimize equipment and the cargo inside.
“Asset tracking can help customers understand a number of things when it comes to allocating available resources”, Schneider explained. “They can find out what a particular trailer is being used for, how long it may have been sitting idle, where it’s being detained, and whether or not it’s helping them generate revenue.”
Visibility backed by data
Another benefit of asset tracking technology offered by Blackberry Radar is visibility into the number of assets a company needs on the road to operate effectively. “We’re now able to help customers understand their true dwell and attention time, and utilization data,” he continued.
“This helps them understand how many trailers they need in their fleet. Historically, we've heard customers say, ‘We need between 2.7 and 3.2 trailers per tractor in our fleet’. We’d ask how they came up with that number, and they’d just say that was the number they’ve used for years, with no data to back it up. With asset tracking hardware, we can show you exactly how well your fleet is being utilized, pinpoint where you have under-utilized equipment, and what you should be doing to get that equipment out to where it’s needed.”
Getting granular
Once assets have been located and sorted, today’s asset tracking services can even help customers collect granular data about what’s inside the trailers—right down to the cubic percentage of cargo.
“By understanding what cubic percentage of a trailer is filled versus empty over time, companies can now start looking at co-loading. This means we can start helping them optimize their logistics routes using meaningful data.”
Proactive safeties
According to Schneider, asset tracking is also showing promise in helping customers save time and money through proactive safeties. “Being stuck doing a safety while a trailer is out on the road can get really expensive. It also means your trailers are of out of your network for days, if not weeks. If you can be more proactive, you can do your safeties ahead of time at your preferred shops in a more cost-effective way.”
Evolving customer demand & supply chain visibility
Finally, Schneider explained that as the shipping and logistics business evolves, asset tracking hardware will continue to evolve alongside it.
“At the end of the day, asset tracking can help shippers get the results they’re looking for. We’re also seeing new ways of our asset tracking solution being used in large industries where it wasn’t available in the past, such as rail. The more tracking there is on all this equipment out there, the more near real-time visibility shippers and the receivers are going to have. Something that will really open the door for supply chain visibility and increased efficiency.”
From our point of view, the more supply chain visibility, the better.