XTRA Lease, a provider of over-the-road trailer equipment rental and leasing in North America, announced Thursday, Oct. 18, that it has added new flexibility to its trailer-tracking service, enabling users to set up customized groups to monitor their fleet activity.
Now, fleet managers can assign leased trailers to groups they create, such as pools or dedicated contracts, and then monitor these trailers based on group activity, XTRA Lease says; fleet managers have a more robust tool to look after their leased fleet, which will improve trailer utilization performance and the ability to respond quickly to business and shipping changes.
XTRA Lease says it also has added the ability for users to receive temporary emergency notifications to monitor specific activities, such as door openings or unplanned trailer movements; for example, a fleet manager may want to keep an eye on a high-value trailer load over a weekend more closely than usual tracking provides. Now, the manager can set the temporary notification feature to generate an e-mail alert any time an activity occurs during the time period he or she specifies, giving the manager better security and assurance that loads reach their destination as planned, according to the company.
“Our trailer-tracking system provides fleets so much greater visibility of their rental and leased trailers,” says Bill Franz, chief executive officer and president of St. Louis-based XTRA Lease. “And these newest features give lease customers the power to customize trailer tracking at a new level, enabling them to tailor the system in a way to match their business operations and needs.”
Other new enhancements, according to XTRA Lease, include new geofencing capabilities, enabling users to manage loads within customer-defined geographical boundaries; exporting trailer history; and capabilities that enable users to assign customized monitoring plans to trailers in their fleet.
Earlier this year, XTRA Lease introduced a new trailer-tracking system for its fleet, a customized version of Qualcomm’s T2 Untethered TrailerTracs asset management system. The tracking devices use solar-powered charging, combined with seven-way power, to help increase battery life. A new Web-based interface is designed to enable XTRA Lease customers to immediately hone in on trailer dormancy and utilization, and locate trailers quickly.
Since its introduction in March, XTRA Lease says it has installed the new devices on more than 90 percent of its rental vans. XTRA Lease says it offers trailer tracking as a free service on dry van rentals as a way to help educate the industry on the service’s value as a productivity tool.
