Stop, Thief!

Wireless Monitoring Leads To Recovery Of Stolen Cargo

Recently, Maersk Line, a liner shipping company headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark, was able to utilize its new refrigerated container global positioning system to track and recover stolen food shipments. The recovered assets included several hundred thousand dollars worth of crab meat, which was found in Baltimore, as well as a frozen load of pork that was recovered by police in northern Maryland after it was high-jacked from a truck.

The system provides real-time visibility into the location and temperature settings of temperature controlled containers in North America through the use of StarTrak Systems' GenTrak genset-based monitoring devices. These devices enable Maersk Lines to immediately identify situations such as equipment malfunctions or transport delays, which could negatively affect customers' supply chains.

"We have the ability to track container movements, reefer operational situations and customer delivery," says William C. Duggan, vice president of Maersk's Refrigerated Services, North America. "Customers are assured of predictable deliveries, with real-time interdiction of any freight problems, because we are able to notify all of the parties responsible for our shipments of any problems in real time."

"Our system is designed to track inventory and the fuel levels of these refrigerated gensets," says Tom Robinson, executive vice president of StarTrack Systems. The Morris Plains, NJ-based company is a provider of GPS tracking and wireless asset management services to the transportation industry.

According to Robinson, his company receives shipping dispatch information from Mersk, which contains the container number as well as its commodity and where it's going. StarTrack matches this information up to the genset via wireless communication.

Then it locates the container via cellular and GPS sensors, which gives it the precise location of the genset and what its condition is. If there is a suspicious change in either, a notification can be made within five minutes.

StarTrack has programmed approximately 250 geo-fences (established geographic parameters) into each of their units which will automatically let the company know if a genset and its attached container are off route and allow them to quickly take action to recover the load in real time.

"The crab meat container was found outside of a rundown warehouse in Baltimore," Robinson says. "The FBI were called in and they not only found the crab meat, but they found a lot of other criminal activities going on at the
location."