High Value Loads

Valuable goods in transit have always been vulnerable to theft. The industry is a soft target for thieves due to:

• the volume and variety of goods being shipped

• the ease of rapid off loading of goods

• the ease of storage and distribution of the fast moving consumer goods that are often the target.

The lack of a power source in this application has meant that tracking devices have generally been ineffective. The most common devices used in the past were local radio homing devices, which once out of range (which could be only a few miles) would not be traceable.

Loads are also very easily lost within large and complex distribution networks. The processes in place for control and management of this problem costs carriers time and money, and in some cases loss of revenue, and even loss of customers.

The issue has always been that no tracking systems were available that could be secreted within the load itself and that would work inside lorries and storage depots.

In the period of three months July to September 2004 over 9 million pounds of trucks were stolen with loads valued at over £22 million making annual losses well in excess of £100 million

Unlike other devices the mtrack has no wires/ aerials and is self powered giving flexibility of location, and ease of installation. mtrack works indoors and outdoors and does not need to see the sky like GPS.

The mtrack can be covertly placed within a pallet of goods, or even put into the box that contains the protected load (e.g. mobile phone box, shrink-wrapped to look like any other). Once the protected load has been delivered the mtrack is removed and returned to the start of the supply chain. However if the load were stolen, the mtrack, secreted inside the package, would be virtually impossible to detect. From the criminal’s point of view, they now have a problem as they no not know which package contains the mtrack, and if they start opening boxes and breaking the shrink wrap around the merchandise, then the resale value goes down.

This simple sampling method means that goods are tracked and can be recovered if stolen the system is also able to give position information of the load, allowing Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA) of the load to be measured stops internal “shrinkage” when members of staff find out some packages are tracked. They are less likely to risk stealing. mtrack is an excellent deterrent without putting a tracking device in every shipment.

mtrack has the following benefits:

Able to be hidden on a high value load discreetly within minutes

Accurate to 1m using GSM/RF and SMS technology

Very compact (125mm x 70mm)

Programmable GEO-Fences alarm the vehicle if it is moved without authorisation

No installation fee, can be moved from asset to asset

No wires for thieves to track and trace back to the battery

Waterproof to 1m IP67 rated allowing location anywhere

Unlike GPS tracking systems it will continue working even if the load is stolen and placed inside a close-sided vehicle or in a garage by the thieves

No external antenna required

Inbuilt motion sensors

Remote activation keyfob to alarm the car manually allowing the unit to trigger if the load is moved from its defined location (see picture) -