Millions of packages and pallets are shipped every day in the United States. The logistics industry is a key part of the business infrastructure of the United States economy. There are many manners in which products are shipped across the United States and other parts of the world. For example but not by way of limitation, products can be placed on pallets or they can be organized in boxes and other similar techniques. It is very common for a shipment of products to include a batch of either pallets or boxes. These batches are shipped together in so as to provide the proper order fulfillment.
One problem with current shipping practices in the lack of tracking the components of a grouped shipment. While there does exist techniques and technology to track a single item such as but not limited to a box or a pallet, there is no current technology that is capable of establishing an interdependency between a group of pallets or boxes to be shipped as a batch and subsequently track the proximity of each component to each other during the shipping process.
Another issue with existing tracking technology is that it is limited as to where the items can be tracked. By way of example not by limitation, current pallets utilize GPS technology to establish the location thereof and track via a software application. Once loaded into a trailer these items cannot be tracked via GPS satellites as the signal reception is blocked during transit. These systems are able to determine when and where a pallet was loaded into a trailer but additional programming is required to link destination and additional shipping information. Further, while this technology tracks the location of a single pallet, it is not capable of establishing location proximity interdependence between pallets or other shipping apparatus such as but not limited to a trailer.
Accordingly, it is desirable that a freight tracking system be provide that is operable to track the geographic location of an item being shipped and further be able to be linked to additional items being shipped wherein a system provides alerts if the proximity of the linked items exceeds a certain distance or if one or more of the batched shipment is removed from an assigned trailer at a location other than the desired location.