5Spotlight: logistics tracking

5.1 Tracker and tag classes

A tracker is defined by how it finds its position and how it reports it. Six classes combine the two, and each trades battery life against coverage and accuracy.

• Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) tags advertise an identifier and borrow the position of the phone or gateway that hears them. Milwaukee runs a community network through its free ONE-KEY app,²⁷⁰ and Apple’s AirTag runs more than a year on a coin cell.²²
• LoRaWAN trackers last up to seven years on three AA cells⁸ but depend on gateway coverage, which Germany lacks nationwide. Semtech shut down LoRa Cloud, the geolocation service many of them used, on 31 July 2025.³⁵⁵
• LTE-M and NB-IoT trackers report straight over the mobile network and are the default for load carriers and containers. Sensolus specifies up to eight years on replaceable batteries.³⁵⁸
• GNSS plus cellular gives trailers and unpowered equipment a satellite position to a few metres outdoors, from Digital Matter’s Oyster3 on three replaceable AA cells¹¹⁶ to Tive’s rechargeable Solo 5G at 50 days or more.³⁸⁹
• Ultra-wideband (UWB) locates to 10-30 cm against fixed anchors in hospitals, plants and warehouses.²⁷²
• Satellite IoT reaches containers at sea. Myriota specifies its UltraLite for ten years on two AA cells,²⁷⁵ and o2 Telefónica has offered NB-IoT with Skylo satellite fallback in Germany since March 2025.^{300, 362}

5.2 Price and battery life by class

A BLE tag sells for €7.14, less than a third of any other tracker class, and a GNSS tracker with cellular from €42.01 net, €84.03 with a rechargeable battery^{271, 322} (Figure 9). Battery life runs from 20 days to about ten years.^{116, 322}

Most B2B vendors sell on quotation only. Digital Matter, Tive, Trackunit, Hilti, Bosch and Myriota publish no list price.^{43, 116, 207, 275, 389, 392} Public prices are therefore mostly single-unit web-shop prices.

Sensolus sells its trackers as a service at a flat fee, €1 per month for the BLE-based location tag at 1,000 assets and €6 per month for the cellular Track 1115 at 500 assets.^{357, 358} Otherwise running costs arise mainly from network and connectivity, on LoRaWAN for instance from a network server such as The Things Stack Standard.³⁸⁵ A 1NCE SIM costs from €12 for ten years and 500 MB, and o2 charges €0.70 per kB for satellite IoT via Skylo.^{3, 362} BLE and UWB tags carry no network fee but need an app, a gateway or anchors on site (Table 10).

Shop prices understate the spread for industrial devices. Berg Insight puts typical device costs at €100-300 for dry containers, €50-150 for pallets and €20-100 for cargo.³¹¹ Devices last 5-10 years on dry containers, 1-10 years on pallets and 20-100 days per charge on cargo.³¹¹

Battery life follows the reporting schedule, not the device. The same Oyster3 lasts about ten years at one update a day and 3.5 years at one an hour.¹¹⁶ A datasheet figure without a reporting interval is no basis for a business case.

Price is moving from hardware to service. Sensolus charges one recurring fee per asset for hardware, connectivity, platform and support, and Hilti gives its BLE tags to fleet customers free of charge.^{207, 357} A maker that wants tracking revenue competes with these models, not with the tag’s bill of materials.

5.3 Regulatory dates and tracker design

From 18 February 2027 the Batteries Regulation requires a product’s portable battery to be “readily removable and replaceable by the end-user” with commercially available tools.¹⁶⁹ The exceptions are narrow, such as washable appliances for wet environments. A potted or glued tracker fails this test, and most of Bosch’s sensor models are sealed.⁴³

The end of Germany’s 2G networks catches the fallback radio. Telekom aims to switch 2G off on 30 June 2028, Vodafone in September 2028 with some critical IoT uses until the end of 2030, and Telefónica at the end of 2028.⁷⁷ Tive’s Solo 5G and Bosch’s Sense I still keep a 2G fallback,^{43, 389} while cellular trackers are specified for up to eight years.³⁵⁸ A device mounted in 2027 thus outlives its fallback. Replaceable cells and LTE-M or NB-IoT without 2G, as in Oyster3, Abeeway and Sensolus, meet both dates.^{8, 116, 358} In Austria A1 switches off its 2G network on 31 May 2028, and Switzerland has already closed 2G.^{6, 47}

Security follows the rules of every connected product. As radio equipment that processes location data, a tracker has had to meet the RED’s requirements on network protection and personal data since 1 August 2025.^{141, 145} Without a user interface it needs a unique credential from the factory instead of a shared default password.¹⁴⁸ It reports location data only as often as the purpose requires.¹⁷¹ In our assessment, a broadcasting BLE tag also needs rotating, non-linkable identifiers, so that strangers cannot follow it.

Vehicles run on a separate clock. The smart tachograph version 2 (G2V2) has applied to vans above 2.5 t in international transport since 1 July 2026, and from 1 January 2027 new cars and vans need packet-switched eCall^{146, 172} (Table 11).

Domestic van transport is exempt from the tachograph duties.^{163, 164} G2V2 records positions with a receiver tested for Galileo’s authenticated navigation messages (OSNMA), in service since July 2025.^{139, 176} An aftermarket tracker on such a van therefore duplicates that record unless it covers the trailer, the load or the tools. The Commission bases the eCall change on the phase-out of 2G and 3G networks in all Member States between 2025 and 2030.¹⁴⁶ None of these rules reaches trailers, containers, tools or machines.

5.4 Vendors and products in DACH

The market splits by asset rather than by radio. In every segment the network or the service, not the tag, is the product (Table 36).

Tools and equipment. Hilti’s ON!Track combines BLE tags, a GPS tracker for machines and trailers, and site and vehicle gateways.²⁰⁷ Trackunit splits the same job into machine telematics, trackers for unpowered equipment, small tags and site gateways.³⁹¹ A BLE tool is found by the contractor’s van gateway, which is the logic of the first archetype. Würth sells its W-CONNECT Bluetooth tag, which shows the last known position in its ORSY online app, to trade customers without public prices.¹⁰ At IAA Transportation in September 2026 Würth also showed a van gateway with LTE and eSIM that checks whether the assigned tools are on board.¹⁸⁶ Bosch Professional sells no stand-alone tag in Germany, only the GCY 42 Bluetooth module for its own tools, at €35 before VAT.³³⁶

Load carriers, containers and trailers. Bosch’s Sense I and Minew’s MTB07 BLE pallet tag serve load carriers and pallets.^{43, 271} Among the providers of disposable smart labels Berg Insight names BOX ID and Giesecke+Devrient in Germany and Truvami in Switzerland.³¹ For container tracking it names Giesecke+Devrient and Sensolus, and for trailers the German makers Schmitz Cargobull and Krone.³²

Vendor churn. A tracker fleet outlives its vendors. Kizy’s domain is now parked for sale, Roambee trades as Decklar and Teltonika lists its TAT141 tracker as end of life.^{92, 240, 382} Device identity, update keys and location solver must therefore stay under the maker’s control.

5.5 Installed base and growth to 2028

Berg Insight expects the installed base of trackers on cargo-carrying units to double, from 11.1 million at the end of 2023 to 22.4 million in 2028, at 15.0 % a year.³² That is faster than fleet management systems in Europe at 11.0 % a year to 2029³⁰ (Table 12). Disposable smart labels grow fastest, from 400,000 shipped worldwide in 2024 to a forecast 31.8 million a year by 2029.³¹

The headroom is large. Only about a fifth (20 %) of some 30 million intermodal containers, 15.7 million trailers and 5.5 million rail freight wagons carry a tracking device.³² Trailers account for 45.8 % of the installed base of trackers on cargo-carrying units and intermodal containers for 40.6 %.³² Maersk has fitted all 360,000 of its reefer containers with tracking devices.³²

5.6 Factory fit and retrofit

Trucks leave the factory with telematics fitted, but trailers, containers and machines do not. That is where the retrofit market lies.³⁰ Daimler Truck fits Fleetboard in all medium and heavy trucks and MAN fits RIO in new ones.³⁰ By active subscribers in Europe at the end of 2024, Targa Telematics with 900,000, Webfleet with 752,000 and CalAmp with 600,000 lead the aftermarket providers, and Scania with 461,000, Daimler Truck with 382,000, Volvo with 364,000 and MAN with 264,000 the truck makers.³⁰ Geotab has taken over Verizon Connect’s remaining European operations, Germany included, and Berg Insight counts 11 mergers and acquisitions in the market in 2025 up to November.³⁰

German fleets leave room. In a Dataforce survey of more than 530 fleet operators from September to December 2024, about a fifth (21 %) of fleets with five or more vehicles used telematics, about 40 % of fleets with 16 or more commercial vehicles and 60 % in transport and warehousing.⁴⁰⁷ GPS location is the most used function, at 84 % for vans. Among the surveyed fleets with telematics, the share that also covers its vans rose from 51 % in 2018 to 78 % in 2024.⁴⁰⁷

5.7 The demand side

Defence, hospitals and building sites all need to find assets, but none of them has a budget line for tracking. The Federal Ministry of Defence lists more than €108 billion for 2026, without a breakdown by logistics or materiel tracking.⁶⁵

Defence supply chains. No Bundeswehr tender published since January 2025 asks for asset, container or vehicle tracking.³²⁹ In our assessment, two design requirements follow from the technology instead. Position evidence needs authenticated GNSS, which Galileo OSNMA offers,¹⁷⁶ and a tracker that can be told to stop transmitting needs a signed command channel.

Hospitals. The Krankenhauszukunftsgesetz funded digitisation with up to €4.3 billion, but applications closed on 31 December 2021 and none of its eleven project types names tracking.^{64, 69} Since 1 January 2025 a hospital without the required digital services faces a deduction of up to 2 % per inpatient case.⁶³ Tracking therefore enters hospitals inside those processes, as UWB or BLE.

Building sites. Theft drives the demand. In Austria, police-recorded losses from building-site theft peaked at €18.7 million in 2017 and ran at about €17 million in 2018 and 2019.³²⁴ Almost nine in ten (88 %) of 150 construction and plant hire firms surveyed in June 2021 had been robbed.³²⁴ The vendors converge on a site gateway that listens for BLE tags, plus GNSS trackers on large items.^{207, 391} For a tool or machine maker the task is therefore integration. A tool with a rotating BLE identifier is found by any contractor gateway, and its data must be accessible to the user.¹⁷⁰