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Imagine you\u2019re Guy Fieri. (Stay with me.) <\/p>\n
It\u2019s late 2024 and the president of your company calls to tell you that 24,000 bottles of your tequila<\/a> have vanished. You\u2019d presumably have a number of questions, but chief among them is likely: How did this happen?<\/p>\n The answer is that global cargo theft is becoming increasingly sophisticated, all while the shipping and logistics industries are struggling to keep up. Unfortunately for the industry, much of the world\u2019s cargo essentially goes dark between checkpoints at ports or distribution centers.<\/p>\n On Wednesday, fleet management company Samsara is announcing its own solution to this problem in the form of a business-card sized sticky tracking label. Simply called the Samsara Tracking Label, it resembles any number of shipping labels that might be affixed to cargo big and small. But that label is hiding a small zinc battery and Bluetooth low energy tech that can be picked up by Samsara\u2019s millions of other devices, offering real-time location in a disposable package.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not Samsara\u2019s first tracker. The company has been helping customers track \u201cassets\u201d for years now, and in different ways, David Gal, Samsara\u2019s vice president of connected equipment, told TechCrunch in an exclusive interview. But those solutions could be bulky and expensive, he said. <\/p>\n \u201cCustomers basically said: \u2018We need something that\u2019s real time, and we need something that can be small enough to mount on any piece of equipment\u2019,\u201d Gal said. That led to Samsara developing a wine cork-sized product called the \u201cAsset Tag.\u201d<\/p>\n The Asset Tag solved real-time visibility for some customers, but the tag itself still protruded from whatever it was fixed to, and was not cheap enough to be put on anything but precious cargo. It\u2019s also something customers wanted back at the end of a shipment, meaning it wasn\u2019t as useful for one-way shipping.<\/p>\n This feedback pushed Gal\u2019s team to iterate further, resulting in the Tracking Label. <\/p>\n The real differentiator to other tracking solutions, Gal said, is Samsara\u2019s existing network of devices. The company has spent the last few years equipping customer fleets with cameras and other sensors to guard and optimize their operations. The Tracking Label leverages that existing infrastructure as a Bluetooth network in order to provide customers with a precise location at any time.<\/p>\n Samsara has already found other ways to use that network to generate new lines of business. In May, it announced a suite of tools<\/a> called \u201cGround Intelligence\u201d that uses AI to spot hazards like potholes in real time.<\/p>\n But that project involves working with cities and local governments. The Tracking Label could be a much bigger business, as the shipping and logistics industries are seemingly constantly in chaos. Companies want certainty about shipments, whether they are trying to get a product to someone on time or waiting for a crucial component.<\/p>\n Customers will receive the Samsara Tracking Labels in a sort of sleep mode, which Gal said could last for as long as nine months. Once a customer activates a label, that zinc battery will power the Bluetooth radio for around 45 days. Once the label is no longer needed, Samsara designed it to be disposable. (A lithium battery, Gal said, would have complicated this goal.)<\/p>\n Gal said he expects Samsara\u2019s label to stay in the the world of \u201ccritical shipments,\u201d meaning this will mostly help large companies \u2014 perhaps even Guy Fieri\u2019s. And it\u2019s not just about cargo theft, he said. Real-time tracking allows companies to make quicker decisions if a shipment is delayed, or re-routed.<\/p>\n \u201cIt shifts the paradigm from reactive to proactive. If you know something\u2019s delayed, you can get ahead of it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Samsara isn\u2019t the only one trying to create better visibility in shipping; UPS just announced a plan in April to use RFID sensors to track packages in real time.<\/p>\n But as Gal points out, RFID only helps if a shipment stays close to an RFID scanner. If a package falls off a truck \u2014 literally or figuratively \u2014 he thinks Samsara\u2019s Tracking Label will be far more effective thanks to the company\u2019s constantly-moving network of sensors.<\/p>\n And while it\u2019s not the only consideration, Gal was not shy about the impact he thinks the Tracking Label can have on cargo theft. <\/p>\n \u201cI have a feeling that we\u2019ll bust some crime rings with this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/em><\/p>\n