Trailer tracking was in the air at the exhibition half of the ATA Management Conference and Exhibition last week.
Four years after trailer tracking was first shown at an annual ATA gathering, it seemed the much-talked-about technology is finally about to take wing.
Here's the way the show looked to this reporter:
Terion leads the pack with the most installed units, including the J.B.Hunt, Knight Transportation and Xtra Lease trailer fleets. Terion introduced an upgraded product, FleetView 3.0, which takes Terion digital while protecting the service from possible erosion of the analog cellular network in coming years. FleetView 3.0 switches automatically from digital to analog when digital service is not available.
GE TIP, the trailer leasing giant, introduced its new trailer tracking product. The company, founded by Thomas A. Edison, clearly intends to use its corporate muscle and brand recognition to sell the VeriWise system, which uses the Orbcomm low-earth-satellite network. Of course, GE gets a running start with its own enormous trailer fleet and numerous leasing customers.
Qualcomm, the 500-pound trucking technology gorilla, points to its trailer tracking consortium, a group of very large truckload carriers advising Qualcomm on the development of a new tracking product that may or may not be called TrailerTRACS -- the name of the product Qualcomm withdrew from the market two yeas ago. The assumption, of course, is that consortium membership represents a commitment to the final product. If the assumption bears out, Qualcomm trailer tracking will have a big market share no matter what it's called. Only Qualcomm could stay in the race without even having a trailer tracking product on the market.
SkyBitz in its second year at ATA claims to do what seems impossible -- track trailers through a geosychronous satellite 22,000 miles from earth, and using only eight AA batteries that last for years. In its first year on the market, SkyBitz has signed more than 30 fleets, including the LandStar group. How much of a threat is this new kid on the trailer tracking block? When this reporter asked a Qualcomm executive about SkyBitz -- expecting a quick one-two sales punch -- the executive instead produced a small piece of hardware that will link a SkyBitz unit with a Qualcomm mobile communications system -- OmniTRACS for example. Qualcomm, he said, anticipates some of its customers may want to use SkyBitz.
Aether, AirIQ and EMS Technologies brought their products to the show, though without any trailer-tracking-specific announcements. Then there were a number of less well-known providers, most aiming at the small- to mid-sized-fleet market of 25 to 500 units -- Fleetilla, Teletouch, TrackStar, WebTech and others.
Each trailer tracking exhibitor brought something unique to the show and it's unlikely that any single offering will dominate the overall market; trucking is too diverse an industry for that. Indeed, each provider offers a technological or service twist that makes it worth consideration by any fleet shopping for trailer tracking.
But there will be winners and there will be losers. Tune in again next year for an ATA exhibition update.
