Sensors to track 'superhighway' cargo from Mexico

Lockheed Martin is working with North America's SuperCorridor Coalition – the Dallas-based trade association – on a $40 million deal to build high-tech sensors to track cargo remotely along a superhighway stretching from Texas to Canada. John Mohler, a senior vice president at Lockheed told the "North America Works II" transportation conference last week in Kansas City that 14 sensor locations would be established in the next three months to track specific cargo shipments along the NASCO corridor

The superhighway incorporates Interstates 35, 29 and 94. The sensor locations would include the Mexican port of Lázaro Cárdenas; Laredo, Texas; Kansas City, Mo.; and Winnipeg, Canada.

Containers coming into Lázaro Cárdenas from China and the Far East would conceivably be equipped with these sensors for tracking in trucks and trains along corridors functioning as NAFTA superhighways.

According to an Associated Press report, Mohler told the conference that the full network would cost $40 million and involve 350 to 400 sensor locations along the NASCO corridor, as well as a "command and control center" to monitor information on the tracked shipments, including cargo location, temperature and weight changes.

Kansas City consultant Jim Bergfalk, the president of the TransAm Group, told the conference NASCO and Lockheed are setting up an "electronic backbone" of sensors that would coordinate with groups such as Kansas City SmartPort. WND previously has reported that KC SmartPort is planning to establish a Mexican customs office in Kansas City's "inland port" complex as part of the I-35 NASCO corridor.

Leslie Holoweiko, a spokeswoman for Lockheed Martin, told WND her company is "working with NASCO to propose a cargo tracking system that we think will make our super-corridor highways systems more secure without impeding the flow of commerce."

"Currently, we are pursuing a proposal," she told WND. "Nothing is firm as of yet and we should have more details in the next few months."

Holoweiko confirmed that senior program manager Mohler was working on the NASCO proposal, but she declined to provide WND any details about Mohler's job or about the NASCO contract he was developing. When asked to define a super-corridor, Holoweiko also declined. Mohler did not return WND phone calls.

Bergfalk and the TransAm Group show up not only on the program of the North America Works II conference, but also on many other venues involving cooperative business ventures with Mexico. A Kansas City business paper story in November 2004 noted that the TransAm Group led by Bergfalk had traveled to Mexico's National Week of Science and Technology in Monterrey, Mexico, to pursue the possibility that a Kansas City life sciences company might begin working in Mexico.

The Kansas City Business Journal story also listed George Blackwood as a member of the TransAm Group. Blackwood, an attorney with the Kansas City law firm of Blackwood, Langworthy & Tyson, is also on the board of directors of NASCO.

However, the TransAm Group does not have a Kansas City telephone listing. Bergfalk, the president of the TransAm Group, takes his telephone calls at the office of SGB Communications, a public relations office that Bergfalk shares with Scott Burnett, the only other person listed on the website as a member of SGB. Burnett is credited on the SGB website as being "an elected legislator of Jackson County, Missouri."

Tiffany Melvin, the executive director of NASCO, confirmed NASCO was pursuing a sensor contract with Lockheed, telling WND that the proposal "is a great opportunity for improving the efficiency and security of cargo as it moves along highways and rail."

Melvin told WND that NASCO was in the process of completing the contract with Lockheed. She also confirmed Bergfalk was being hired by NASCO to be the president of the International Mid-Continent Trade and Transportation Corridor Association, a new non-profit organization NASCO is forming to administer the Lockheed contract.

According to the AP report, Lockheed's Mohler told last week's Kansas City conference Lockheed planned to contribute $5 million of the $7 million needed to complete the pilot-project phase of the sensor project.

Lockheed and NASCO declined to tell WND how they planned to fund the $40 million required to build out the full sensor system. Lockheed and NASCO also declined to say who would own the system once it is completed.

Full throttle ahead........ being tested by Smartport also

Shipment tracking system moves ahead at SmartPort
By Jason Shaad
The Kansas Business Journal
September 1 , 2006
Local transportation officials authorized financing for the next step in developing software that can track shipments through many carriers.

On Aug. 29, the Mid-America Regional Council approved a $530,000 agreement with Electronic Data Systems Corp., based in Plano, Texas, to continue developing technology for the Kansas City SmartPort Intelligent Transportation Systems Integration Project.

The technology will allow multiple businesses to control and track shipments on a common platform.

"This step is pivotal to implement the real meat of the project," said Chris Gutierrez, president of Kansas City SmartPort, which is overseeing the development of the technology. "Only two companies have the technology and capacity to do this. EDS is one of them."

So far, SmartPort and EDS have tested ways to monitor the secure transport of goods through various carriers. Now, they will develop a system that integrates those test results into a database that will make the supply chain more visible.

Dean Kothmann, client industry executive for EDS, said only the government has a system that can track a shipment through multiple carriers. For businesses, once a shipment leaves the company's tracking system, it's in somebody else's hands.

SmartPort's data clearinghouse will accept the various tracking systems from companies and allow them to monitor the supply chain. The system will save time and money, Kothmann said. It also will improve businesses' ability to negotiate international shipments because participating companies can show foreign governments that goods are secure throughout the shipping process.

Kothmann said the current phase of financing will go to developing a more comprehensive prototype. With continued financing, the technology should be available by late 2007 or 2008, he said.

Michael Zachary, director of port planning and logistics at the Port of Tacoma in Washington, said the ports of Seattle and Tacoma have received more than $100 million to study the security of supply chains entering the country. The best solution for improving security is a more visible supply chain, he said, which SmartPort is addressing.

SmartPort used about $750,000 from the U.S. Department of Transportation in the first two development phases, Gutierrez said. The department has earmarked an additional $4 million for the project during the next three years. SmartPort will match that with in-kind payments, Gutierrez said.
jshaad@bizjournals.com | 816-421-5900

Technology guards cargo
By Rick Alm
The Kansas City Star
December 16, 2005
Hundreds of tractor-trailers loaded cargo in Kansas City on Thursday morning and hit the road for destinations across North America.
One of them was wired by Kansas City-based BV Solutions Group Inc. for high-tech monitoring all the way to the Mexican border at Laredo, Texas.
The monitoring is designed to instantly alert authorities to truck break-ins, cargo tampering or route deviations, and represents a 21st century defense against thieves, smugglers and terrorists.
The system is a component of a proposed Mexican customs clearing facility scheduled to open in May in Kansas City’s West Bottoms industrial district. Cargo that can pass customs there could reduce or avoid substantial delays at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Thursday’s truck launch, from a Faultless Starch warehouse in the West Bottoms, was the first of many tests to come using real cargo runs.
“This is what the global supply network of the future will look like,” said Chris Gutierrez, president of KC SmartPort.
For three years Gutierrez’s nonprofit economic development group has managed nearly $6 million in federal grants from the Transportation and Commerce departments to develop the cargo monitoring tools.
The system relies on existing cell phone and GPS technology, but piggybacks other data so monitoring station personnel can download reports at will from moving or stationary vehicles. The reports pinpoint not only a truck’s location but also whether electronically sealed cargo doors have been opened. The temperature, light levels and any motion in the cargo section also can be monitored.
“We’re very interested in what BVS is trying to accomplish,” said Thomas M. Glaser, president and chief operating officer of Indianapolis-based Celadon Trucking. One truck from his company’s fleet of 3,000 deployed across North America was selected as the guinea pig.
The truck left Kansas City around 10 a.m. Thursday. At 12:02 p.m. a monitoring report displayed a map that showed the vehicle’s latitude and longitude — and no pinging alarms as it approached Emporia, Kan., at 67 mph.
The 53-foot trailer already was equipped with Celadon’s own rudimentary GPS tracking gear, not unlike the chips in many cell phones today that allow parents, for instance, to check on the whereabouts of a cell-phone-toting youngster, Glaser said.
Troy Terrell, BV Solutions’ director of professional services, said the federal grant program is developing and testing various data systems for the best way to integrate such vital security data with the wide variety of commercial GPS tracking systems aboard many U.S. trucks.
“We want to minimize the cost to the carriers,” Terrell said. “Using their existing technology is the best of all worlds — free.”
The aim, he said, is to keep the system’s per-truck monitoring costs to a minimum and perhaps less than $20 a month.
Glaser said that price isn’t too much to pay, considering that every truckload of cargo could be valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars — and some are worth millions.
The precedent-setting customs pact would establish Mexico’s first clearinghouse on U.S. soil. Gutierrez said approval by U.S. and Mexican officials is expected early in 2006.
The Kansas City Council has approved a $2.5 million loan to SmartPort to build the customs facility in the West Bottoms near Kemper Arena on city-owned land east of Liberty Street and mostly south of Interstate 670. SmartPort will lease the site from the city and repay the loan over 10 years with user fees collected from international shippers.
Kansas City is the only U.S. city the Mexican government had agreed to negotiate with so far.
Under the arrangement, which is still the subject of diplomatic negotiations, freight would be inspected by Mexican authorities in Kansas City and then sealed for movement directly to Mexican destinations, with fewer costly border delays.
The arrangement becomes even more lucrative when Asian markets that ship through Mexican ports are figured into the mix. During the past year Kansas City has signed cooperative agreements with the Mexican deep-water port cities of Manzanillo and Lazaro Cardenas and the Mexican state of Michoacan, on Mexico’s Pacific coast. The pacts are aimed at fostering business and government partnerships.
This summer Kansas City signed similar working agreements with the Canadian city of Winnipeg and the province of Manitoba.
Veracruz, on Mexico’s southern gulf coast, is next, council member Bonnie Sue Cooper said this week. A successful city trade mission scheduled for February could give Kansas City its first transit link to European sea shipping lanes.
Meanwhile, locally based Kansas City Southern earlier this year acquired Mexico’s Texas Mexican Railway Co., which will haul cargo in an international corridor through the former Richards-Gebaur airfield, which the city has announced it will sell next year for private redevelopment as an intermodal transit and cargo hub also with a Mexican customs component.
Shippers such as Celadon’s Glaser say Kansas City is poised to become a funnel for Mexico-bound truck traffic across the upper Midwest and Canada.
Cooper admits she’s already a bit worried that hundreds, if not thousands, of additional trucks traveling through the West Bottoms daily will create maintenance and highway access headaches.
“We’ll meet those problems and handle it,” she said Thursday of the potential for traffic snarls.
Glaser said any traffic problems or bottlenecks that emerge in Kansas City can’t be any worse than what truckers already experience in Laredo. He said loaded trailers from the U.S. can sit for a week awaiting the customs paperwork clearing the shipment for Mexico.
Dave Burdick, co-owner of Kansas City-based cargo broker Priority Logistics Inc., which set up Thursday’s test cargo run, said plenty of other cities and shippers are at work on their own inland ports.
But Burdick said those competitors “are five years behind us.”
The Kansas City customs pact with Mexico got a big boost earlier this month when Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt led a state trade delegation south of the border to meet with President Vicente Fox, who, Blunt said, appears committed to the Kansas City project.
“When you look at the Lazaro Cardenas to Kansas City corridor, it would be on a very short list of transportation projects in the world with potential to move great amounts of goods,” the governor said in an interview last week.
First glance
¦ BV Solutions Group’s system for tracking truck cargo is a component of a proposed Mexican customs clearing facility planned for Kansas City’s West Bottoms industrial district.
¦ The system is designed to alert authorities to truck break-ins, cargo tampering or route deviations, and represents a defense against terrorists.
Reproduced with permission of The Kansas City Star © Copyright 2006 The Kansas City Star. All rights reserved. Format differs from original publication. Not an endorsement.

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