November 2002

Trials of MTS, a satellite-based trailer position monitoring and tracking system from Alcatel, are now under way with UK two hauliers. The system is encased in a compact 400g enclosure the size of a paperback book, and the unit is said to be ideal for mounting quickly on trailers and containers.

An additional robust weatherproof enclosure is now also available, and two other new features are being introduced - a temperature sensor that will trigger an alert when pre-set parameters are exceeded, and a facility for transmitting temperature data gathered by monitoring systems from German manufacturer Euroscan.

Existing users of the MTS system include transport group Calberson in France and forwarder Ungar in Austria. Calberson is producing daily trailer position reports using Alcatel's own Fleet Manager AFM4 software and Microsoft MapPoint mapping.