Tracking Inland Waterway Assets

The United States inland and Intracoastal Waterway system handles about 630 million tons of cargo valued at $73 billion annually. In addition, about one billion tons of hazardous materials are transported on inland waterways each year, with nearly a fourth of the total moving across the United States.

Until now, tracking assets on these waterways was not an easy matter. The biggest technical question has been how to send asset related information from the carrier to the shore-based installations.

By using High Frequency radio for inland waterway asset tracking, HySky Technologies, Inc. has virtually eliminated the technological barriers that had previously existed. A small company can just as easily track a modest sized fleet in a regional area as a large corporation can track and monitor the positions of their national fleet and the integrity of their cargos.

High frequency radio offers a superior level of service and eliminates the concern of losing track of the asset due to voids in satellite or cellular coverage. A cell phone may have only one or two towers to access resulting in a significant number of “no coverage” areas. HySky’s high frequency radio transceivers have eight, geographically separate, ultra-sensitive receiving sites available to them. These sites offer a combined reliability approaching 99.999 percent.

Furthermore, the HySky tracking solution is “acknowledgement based”. That is, the monitoring company and the asset are in constant communication confirming and receiving the asset’s GPS location.The reliability and service of this unique system cannot be matched by cellular or satellite service.