Automated operations platform, Motive, expands its offering for the food and beverage market today with the launch of a new Reefer Monitoring solution for refrigerated vehicles and trailers (reefers).

The solution helps businesses improve compliance with food transportation safety requirements and reduce costs related to reefer operations. 

Motive Reefer Monitoring includes a new environmental sensor that remotely monitors reefer temperature and humidity conditions in real time. With this capability, businesses have all their fleet data on a single screen, including location, vehicle telematics, and reefer insights.

The solution makes it also possible to create reefer logs for any time period on demand without the need to visit a service center, which reduces cost, decreases reefer downtime, and improves the service that fleets can provide to their own customers. It also helps the fleets to comply with the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) requirements.

 “Delivering ice cream at -20°F when it’s 90°F degrees outside requires us paying great attention to the conditions inside our reefers,” said Marc Cain, Transportation Manager at Mayer Bros Apple Products.

“Motive Reefer Monitoring enables us to set the report for every 15 mins to ensure there are no issues with the load. Having this level of visibility saves us 5-10 hours per week in fleet manager productivity and prevents any spoilage.”

For customers using Thermo King reefer units, Motive collaborated with Thermo King to introduce a new integration that enables monitoring of reefer telematics data from the Motive Fleet Dashboard.

This integration helps to avoid any food spoilage and lower the operating and maintenance cost of the reefer systems by proactively detecting any problems. In addition, the new integration enables customers to remotely program and control reefer units to eliminate manual pre-cooling before a trip, saving time and reducing the potential for human error. 

“Our Voice of the Enterprise survey shows that integration is a major issue for fleet owners,” said Mark Fontecchio, research analyst at 451 Research, part of S&P Global Market Intelligence. “It is the second-largest inhibitor to IoT initiatives at commercial transportation companies, behind only security concerns. Fleet owners – including reefer operators – often want their technology to come pre-integrated and available to see on a single dashboard, rather than having to switch back and forth between multiple applications to find the information they need.”

“Our new device and the partnership with Thermo King gives our customers a single location for managing their entire operations,” said Jai Ranganathan, Chief Product Officer at Motive.

“Our strategy enables our customers to access and take actions on all of their vehicles and equipment, including refrigeration units, in a consolidated dashboard within our Automated Operations Platform. We then use the power of our AI capabilities to make informed decisions about how to get the most value out of those assets.”

Motive’s Environmental Sensor and integration with Thermo King are available today to customers in the United States and Canada.