No ignition, no power, no one watching it.
A trailer does not tell you when it is working. It sits in a yard for six weeks and nobody notices, because nothing about it changes and there is no driver to ask.
Everything comes out of one cell
There is no alternator to fall back on. Move the slider — the years are an energy budget, not a brochure figure.
A 15,000 mAh cell, 25 µA asleep, and 1.5 mAh per wake — most of that the cellular attach, not the GPS fix.
against a 10-year chemistry ceiling
Enough to see which yard something sat in and for how long, which is what the utilisation numbers need. Not enough to chase a theft.
Every asset tracker on the market makes this trade. The ones quoting five years are quoting it at a cadence they do not print next to the number.
So do not pick a cadence — pick two
The trade-off above only bites if the interval is fixed. An accelerometer costs almost nothing to leave running, and it knows the difference between a trailer parked and a trailer leaving.
So the unit sleeps like a once-a-day tracker and wakes like a live one, and you pay for the fast cadence only during the minutes it matters.
- 01
Parked
~0.4% of the battery per yearOne report a day, and the radio is off the rest of the time. The cell barely notices.
- 02
Moved
Only paid while something is actually happeningThe accelerometer wakes the unit within seconds and it switches to reporting every two minutes for as long as it keeps moving.
- 03
Outside hours
The alert that pays for the unitMovement in a window you did not authorise raises an alert immediately rather than waiting for the next scheduled report.
The tail nobody has seen
Rank owned plant by days worked and the shape is always the same. The top of the list justifies itself. The bottom is capital sitting in a yard being depreciated.
12 assets over 90 days. Average utilisation is 36%, which sounds survivable until you notice it is the average of 78 days and 0. 5 of them worked under 10 days, and every one is parked at Namar yard — which is the sort of thing that only becomes obvious once somebody ranks the list.
- TRL-114 Flatbed trailer Sulay yard 78
- TRL-102 Curtainsider Sulay yard 71
- GEN-233 250 kVA genset Exit 18 site 64
- TRL-140 Flatbed trailer Dammam 58
- CMP-051 Compressor Exit 18 site 41
- GEN-219 125 kVA genset Qurtubah 33
- TWR-018 Light tower Diriyah site 22
- GEN-241 250 kVA genset Namar yard 9
- CMP-066 Compressor Namar yard 6
- TWR-024 Light tower Namar yard 4
- GEN-208 125 kVA genset Namar yard 2
- TRL-088 Skeletal trailer Namar yard 0
What goes on a tag
Anything worth more than the tracker and capable of leaving without anyone signing for it.
Trailers
Flatbeds, curtainsiders, skeletals — anything that spends its life uncoupled.
Generators
With run-hours off the controller where one is fitted, not inferred from vibration.
Compressors and pumps
Site plant that walks between jobs and is never quite where the sheet says.
Light towers
Small, valuable, and the most-stolen thing on a Saudi site.
Containers and skips
Demurrage is easier to argue when you can show when it actually landed.
Attachments
Buckets, breakers and augers, on the tag rather than the full unit.
Fitted in a minute, forgotten for years
Magnet or four bolts, IP67, no wiring and nothing to commission. The point of a sealed unit with a decade of cell in it is that nobody ever has to think about it again.
The tag, next to the other units- IP67
- Sealed against dust and washdown
- −30 to 85°C
- Rated well past a Riyadh summer
- Magnet or bolt
- No power, no wiring, no fitter
- Tamper flag
- Raises an alert if it is prised off
- Solar option
- For anything you would rather never touch
- Motion wake
- Accelerometer overrides the schedule
The rest of the platform
Live tracking
Position, speed and ignition every ten seconds.
Routing and dispatch
Plan the day, send it to the driver's phone.
AI dashcam
Road and cabin, clipped to the event.
Driver behaviour
Scored per driver and per trip.
Incident centre
Footage, telemetry and witnesses in one file.
Maintenance
By odometer, engine hours or date.