Mobile Asset Tracking Not a Homogenous(sic) Market, Finds ABI Research
..."There are two key differences between container tracking and trailer tracking: containers are typically used in international trade, while trailers are usually domestically transported. Containers are therefore subject to greater governmental regulation, and, quite frankly, the US government and other nations have been dragging their feet in this area," adds Schrier. "Second, the custody chain in containers is much more fragmented than with trailers, and no party wants to bear the burden of the increased cost." ...
Read Article Here: http://tinyurl.com/ckwao
Mobile Asset Tracking, well what the heck is that? Probably more meanings than even I could blog about, but one of the important ones is tracking trailers and shipping containers.
There are significant reasons to do this, both in the realm of business and security ... which, not surprisingly, overlap.
For years US and overseas transportation companies have spent large sums to track the prime movers ... truck tractors and ships, primarily. The costs of this effort are almost universally judged to be more than worthwhile. The giants of the tracking industry, Qualcomm, Teletrac, etc. have healthy bottom lines and based on the products they sell and the services they provide probably have every right to those products.
But what's missing? The part that moves the cargo and provides the profit, that's what! For years I have wondered why this business is upside down. By themselves a fleet of truck tractors are a worthless liability. About the only thing you could do with them without trailers is use them as very cramped expensive taxis (not even legal under Federal regulations) or perhaps put a freezer atop the 5th wheel and let the drivers sell ice cream cones.
The only think that earns a trucking company's income is the trailer on the back end. tracking of trailers is, after years, moving forward. There are technical challenges that differ from the tracking of the trucks themselves, but there are several technologies out that that work well. benefits include efficiency in movement (equaling profit), reduction of number of assets required and reduction in theft and "shrinkage" with some solutions.
So when will someone decide that containers are worth the same sort of visibility and control? The largest component of the problem does not seem to be cost ... containers are an asset valuable enough to track (in many cases at the beginning and end of overseas shipments the containers are indeed the "trailers' themselves. An additional big payoff benefit would seem to be security. Through initiatives such as operation safe cargo and other programs, the TSA and allied government agencies have made it even more cost effective to track containers than domestic trailers.
What do I perceive as the holdup then? The old failure to accept responsibility problem. Ajax Trucking knows they own their trucks and trailers and they're all here in the US, so they know what makes sense for them to track. XYZ International Containers, however, has their assets scattered all over the world, and, in fact, may well not be a US company. Their business need to accept responsibility for each of their containers within the US is clearly ill-defined.
From a security standpoint, though, their need is even more well-defined. The possibility that Ajax trucking will pick up a dirty bomb or team of terrorists outside the US and ease them across our borders is pretty remote, but the possibility that one of XYZ's containers will perform this same mission, intentionally, is significantly more real.
In most cases I am a pretty pragmatic, capitalistic guy. I'm against big government in general terms and specifically against big government projects when the private sector could perform them better. But in this case I think the need for government leadership is very clear.
The TSA has had money to help fund these initiatives for several years now. In many cases they haven't even been able to spend the money. Sad. What we need is a senator who cares as much about national security as Hillary Clinton cares about the possibility of silly sex cartoons in a video game to just get the legislation rolling to make container tracking a requirement. Once someone decides that the responsibility must be accepted, the solutions will move from demonstration mode to reality and not only will the US be safer, but the business entities who are 'forced' to comply will benefit in a dozen hidden ways from the better business controls that ensue.
Seems relatively win-win to me, are there any leaders in the US?
No comments:
Post a Comment