Using a railway GPS tracker can provide you access to valuable current and historical data reports. GPS tracking provides real-time insights into the time railcars spend inside geofences. It can provide near-instant updates on current locations as well as dwell times. All this knowledge can help shippers address operational challenges as they arise while also managing costs by reducing delays and prolonged stops.
Additionally, the historical data at your disposal can be analyzed to identify areas for improvement. Besides, you can identify trends to make better decisions.
Key Advantages of Data Access
There are two key areas where railway tracking data can help you the most:
- Compliance & Reporting: GPS tracking systems can capture and report on the use and movement of rail assets. Such data helps you comply with the regulations and generate useful reports for the management and stakeholders.
- Data Analysis: GPS data can be analyzed to identify trends and patterns in the utilization and performance of railway assets. Such information can help you make data-based decisions for streamlining different aspects of the operations.
Freight Growth
According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, freight revenues are expected to cross $1.6 trillion by 2050. A significant percentage of this growth is expected from higher-value freight. The railroads, bulk commodity tonnage is expected to grow by 12%.
Importance of Freight Growth to Real-Time Tracking
As mentioned above, most of the growth for railroads is expected to come from the industry’s increased emphasis on transporting higher-value goods. Some examples of such goods include:
- Consumer products
- Perishable goods
- Industrial products
- Automotive & automotive parts
- Forest products
Industrial products are expected to make a bigger share of higher-value freight growth.
When it comes to higher-value freight demands, there is an innate need for more reliable services. This is where the role of railway GPS tracker increases. It can provide shippers with the information required to answer their customers’ questions. This can include questions such as, “where is our shipment right now” or “when can we expect the shipment to be delivered?”
Real-time tracking in the railway freight sector can help the industry focus more on improving visibility and improve efficiencies. All this can help the rail freight sector become more competitive with the trucking industry.
Gathering Data & Accessing Real Time Information
Railway GPS tracking, similar to its trucking fleet management counterpart, is a lot about accessing tons of data from real-time trackers and onboard devices. There are certain challenges that continue to delay a wide-ranging adoption of the technology. These challenges revolve around the questions of who processes the real-time data, who pays for it, and who receives it. As more businesses adopt the technology and address these challenges real-time tracking of freight cars can become much more efficient and effective.
Addressing a Broad Range of Rail Freight Transport Challenges
Some of the most common rail freight transport challenges that can be addressed with GPS tracking are as follows:
- Inaccurate ETAs: Traditionally, ETAs required manual or reactive calls between railroads and carriers. With real-time tracking, shippers can get automatic updates on ETAs as things keep changing.
- Managing Reactive Disruption: Managing disruptions, related to railroad strikes and weather, has followed a manual approach. Other examples of such expectations included:
- Dwell times at origin terminals
- Dwell times at interchanges
- Delays
- Bad orders
- Holds
With real-time access to information, you can instantly identify the affected shipments and communicate delays to all the involved parties.
- Empty Railcar Tracking: Access to data can also provide you with information on empty railcar movements. Such information can help with planning and the efficient use of private fleet capacity. GPS-based Empty railcar tracking can help shippers track their empty railcars back to their origin. Such a capability can enable availability projection for your future loaded shipments.
Thus, railway GPS tracking can help shippers and their clients in different ways by providing access to valuable data. An ideal tracking solution will include hardware and software systems. Such a platform can provide easy and instant access to data. Such data can also provide insights into trends and patterns to improve your business’ decision-making capabilities.
Prime Star 
Ahmed Khan 
Mehar Mozan