Motive (formerly KeepTruckin) has created a new monitoring solution for refrigerated vehicles and trailers to help fleets improve compliance with food transportation safety requirements and reduce costs related to reefer operations. 

Motive Reefer Monitoring includes an environmental sensor that remotely monitors reefer temperature and humidity conditions in real-time. With this capability, fleets have all their data on a single screen, including location, vehicle telematics, and reefer insights.

The solution makes it also possible to create reefer logs for any time period on demand without the need to visit a service center, which reduces cost, decreases reefer downtime, and improves the service that fleets can provide to their own customers, Motive officials said in a press release.It also helps the fleets to comply with the Food Safety Modernization Act requirements.

“Delivering ice cream at minus 20 degrees when it’s 90 degrees outside requires us paying great attention to the conditions inside our reefers,” said Marc Cain, transportation manager at Mayer Bros Apple Products. “Motive Reefer Monitoring enables us to set the report for every 15 mins to ensure there are no issues with the load. Having this level of visibility saves us 5-10 hours per week in fleet manager productivity and prevents any spoilage.”

For customers using Thermo King reefer units, Motive collaborated with Thermo King to introduce an integration that enables monitoring of reefer telematics data from the Motive Fleet Dashboard. This integration helps to avoid any food spoilage and lower the operating and maintenance cost of the reefer systems by proactively detecting any problems. In addition, the integration enables customers to remotely program and control reefer units to eliminate manual pre-cooling before a trip.

“Our Voice of the Enterprise survey shows that integration is a major issue for fleet owners,” said Mark Fontecchio, research analyst at 451 Research, part of S&P Global Market Intelligence. “It is the second-largest inhibitor to IoT initiatives at commercial transportation companies, behind only security concerns. Fleet owners – including reefer operators – often want their technology to come pre-integrated and available to see on a single dashboard, rather than having to switch back and forth between multiple applications to find the information they need.”

Motive’s environmental sensor and integration with Thermo King are available to customers in the United States and Canada.