NATDA doesn't work for us

I was doing a little homework on the upcoming NATDA Trailer Show and decided to search the exhibitor list for “GPS.”

Six companies came up.

That got my attention, so I started looking through them to see what they actually offered when it came to trailer security and theft prevention.

And it reinforced something I’ve been saying for years:

GPS tracking and trailer security are not necessarily the same thing.

One company even describes its product as a GPS trailer alarm. It detects unauthorized movement, sends alerts and tracks the trailer’s location. Those are useful features.

But I couldn’t find anything mentioning door sensors or a siren.

That’s an important distinction.

Knowing your trailer is moving when it shouldn’t be is valuable.

Knowing someone opened the side door before the trailer ever moved is valuable too.

So is a 120 dB siren making a whole lot of noise, the trailer lights flashing, and doing something to make the trailer harder to simply tow away.

GPS is an important part of our G2 system. But we’ve never believed GPS alone should be the entire security system.

And here’s the part I still find interesting after more than 20 years in this business.

Even with all of that, complete trailer security systems like ours still don’t seem to get much attention from the trailer industry itself.

GPS tracking? Plenty of interest.

Locks, coupler devices and other physical deterrents? Plenty of those too.

But a system designed around detecting someone getting into the trailer, sounding an alarm, sending notifications, tracking it and helping prevent it from being towed away?

For whatever reason, that still seems to be a tougher sell.

Maybe the industry is more interested in finding a trailer after it disappears than trying to stop the theft before it gets that far.

I’m still trying to figure that one out.