Fleet Complete and Blackberry integrate products

Customers of Blackberry and Fleet Complete will now have the ability to remotely monitor their trucks from front to back, inside and out, with one interface.

This morning the companies announced they were forming a reselling partnership, which will allow Fleet Complete to sell and bundle Blackberry’s Radar with its other products, expanding its current fleet tracking and monitoring solutions.

The companies said integrating Radar with Fleet Complete’s current system enables better asset capacity management for carriers, allowing for digital freight brokering, and incorporates the environmental conditions of trailers and containers in a single interface.

Blackberry’s Radar was released last April, and according to senior vice-president and general manager of Radar at Blackberry Philip Poulidis, the device’s sensors can be installed on any trailer or chassis in less than 10 minutes, giving users access to information such as remaining cargo space, temperature, humidity, and atmospheric pressure.

Partnering with Fleet Complete allows Radar’s information and user platform to be integrated with Fleet Complete’s current monitoring solutions, so all the information from both products can be viewed by users on one interface, which will be designed as a map.

Poulidis said the real benefit to users will be allowing them to maximize efficiency through a continuous, near-real-time, view of all the assets in their fleet.

“By working together, we will be able to unlock the excess shipping capacity due to logistics inefficiencies and improve the visibility into an entire fleet of both powered and unpowered assets,” he said.

The integrated solution can track the location of a truck within a 3% milage accuracy. This will allow fleets to not only see that a truck has arrived at a yard or delivery point, but where in the yard that truck is. Poulidis said that kind of accuracy is the difference between knowing if your truck is in line to unload cargo, or is at the dock unloading it, with one glance. The same asset location accuracy will save drivers time searching through a yard for a particular trailer, because the system will know exactly where it is.

The new integrated Radar option will also be available to Fleet Complete’s customers on cellular devices exclusively through AT&T in the United States, and Telus in Canada.

Financial information about the transaction will not be disclosed, however both companies see the partnership as a strategic one, allowing them to further penetrate a market with significant room for growth.

CEO of Fleet Complete Tony Lourakis said there are about 20 million trucks, and many more trailers, currently in operation in the industry in North America. With just 30%-35% of those having adopted fleet telematics solutions – a number that drops to just 12% for trailers and chassis – both Lourakis and Poulidis see the partnership as an opportunity to gain a stronger foothold in the space.

In addition to being offered as an integrated solution with Fleet Complete, customers will still be able to purchase Radar directly from Blackberry.

For those customers who have already purchased either product, there are no immediate plans to offer a retroactive ability to upgrade to the new integrated solution.

“It doesn’t change the relationship we have with our current customers, unless of course they want to take advantage of the offering,” said Poulidis.


Have your say


This is a moderated forum. Comments will no longer be published unless they are accompanied by a first and last name and a verifiable email address. (Today's Trucking will not publish or share the email address.) Profane language and content deemed to be libelous, racist, or threatening in nature will not be published under any circumstances.

*