Cargoways using Gatehouse Logistics telematics to monitor truck fleets transporting racing cars

Cargoways controls routes with the ghTrack telematics portal of Gatehouse Logistics to monitor 170 trucks carrying racing cars every day with the technology

It’s been a breakthrough year for forwarding company Cargoways Logistik & Transport, winning the business of transporting race cars to venues.

The first contract was to transport Formula E equipment using 35 trucks from London to Paris and the success of that operation led to Formula 1 enquiries.

Cargoways specializes in transports to islands. Currently, its core business is between Italy and England, but opportunities are now opening up to the firm in Sweden, Norway, Finland and Germany. 

The main office is in Kufstein, Austria where it controls all transportation. The company was formed just two years ago and all employees have logistics backgrounds.

With approximately 1,500 transports per month, Cargoways CEO Michael Duben expects the business to handle about 16,000-17,000 transports for the current year and has around 35 to 40 partners driving for the company.

The forwarder has framework agreements with transport companies and is responsible for employing the full use of all trucks.

If it does not assign a job to any of the trucks on any day, Cargoways has to pay them idle time so it is important to know where the vehicles are located and their availability.

So Cargoways chose the telematics portal ghTrack, from Gatehouse Logistics, to obtain accurate vehicle information.

Gatehouse says its portal is capable of providing an overview of all telematics systems on just one monitor. If a vehicle used by Cargoways is using an unknown GPS system, GateHouse establishes a new interface within a day.

The Cargoways portal currently provides only the location of vehicles but this is possible to extend, says the company.

Soren Danielsen, GateHouse’s international sales manager, says: “We can aggregate all important data in our portal and what is shown depends entirely on the customer.

“We can add and remove vehicles from the system based on tour information so transport companies need have no concerns about customers seeing any truck after a tour is ended.”

Cargoways’ CEO Duben says: “Our partners allow us to have their trucks at our disposal for at least six weeks and are connected to the ghTrack system. If a partner is planning to use the truck in other tours, he can remove it from the portal.”

The company says the ghTrack system is ideal for Cargoways because it consolidates logistics data from so many different transport companies using different telematics systems and is transparent.

Duben says: “The transport market is still relatively inefficient and ghTrack is a technology unifier.

“The cost for the portal is also transparent. Cargoways is charged per truck per month at a fixed amount.”

Data roadmap

Cargoways has been using ghTrack for just one year so many of the functions being used are still rudimentary. Approximately 90 per cent of its fleet is integrated into the system and Duben now plans integration with its Transport Management System.

Duben says: “By integrating ghTrack into our TMS, we can distribute order information directly to a truck. This automates the process and takes human intervention out of the equation.”

As Cargoways gets data from the truck, the company will transfer this information to the customer so that they know the position of their cargo and when it will arrive. Once a job starts, the customer will be able to track the order number of the truck online.

Duben says: “About 80 per cent of calls we make revolve around where vehicles are located. By automating the process, we will make significant gains in productivity.”