BlackBerry Radar Teams With BigRoad, Pana-Pacific
BlackBerry continued its push into the freight hauling industry by expanding the availability of its Radar asset-tracking device through partnerships with two large distributors — BigRoad Freight and Pana-Pacific.
The Radar system collects and reports real-time trailer and cargo information, including location, route and mileage, temperature, humidity, door status and load state. Waterloo, Ontario-based BlackBerry said the Radar system collects up to 100 times as much data as a conventional GPS-based track and trace system. The data is stored on the cloud.
BigRoad Freight said it would add the Radar-M to its mix of hours-of-service and electronic logging device products offered to its owner-operator and fleet users. BigRoad claims 500,000 drivers and 40,000 fleets in North America as customers.
In addition, the Radar-M and the less-expensive Radar-L will be available by the end of January through the Pana-Pacific network of 2,800 heavy duty truck dealerships, more than 35 original equipment parts distribution centers and thousands of fleet companies in North America.
"We believe [BlackBerry Radar's] near-real- time information will empower our customers to make better business decisions and improve the overall performance of their transportation operations.” - John Trenberth, CEO, Pana-Pacific. https://t.co/BfkyNoASqZ pic.twitter.com/t9ljkKeWmi — BlackBerry (@BlackBerry) December 19, 2017
There is a one-time fee for the Radar hardware, including a monitor and the tracking devices that are installed within a trailer. There also is a recurring subscription fee for the Radar’s dashboard analytics and information, BlackBerry Radar Senior Vice President Philip Poulidis said.
BlackBerry has worked to transition from a marketer of smartphones into a provider of cybersecurity software and services. In recent months it has partnered with Intel Fujisoft, Hitachi Transport System, Tata Elxsi and Tokyo Electron.
BigRoad is a division of Fleet Complete, a provider of dispatching, fleet tracking and mobile management systems to more than 265,000 subscribers and 10,000 businesses. It has distribution deals in the United States with AT&T and in Canada with Telus.
The Radar-L is designed for flatbed, chassis, containers, heavy machinery and other non-powered assets. Pana-Pacific distributes such transportation communications equipment as mobile audio, satellite radio, telematics, navigation and video systems.
