Online tracking

Though some international car shipping companies are truly worthy of your trust, it’s still important that you stay proactive all throughout the delivery process of the vehicle. One of the best ways to do that is through online tracking.

As its name suggests, online tracking means monitoring the movement of the vehicle from the point of pickup to delivery through online means. This basically reduces the possibility of calling customer support, which may not be available immediately to meet your needs or answer your questions or concerns.

There are a couple of components that are important to online tracking, such as the date of pickup and delivery.

Issues with Dates

Contrary to popular belief, the date provided by the company isn’t accurate. However, it’s the best estimate they can give you. This is because many factors can affect the actual time the vehicle is picked up and then delivered to your preferred destination.

For example, the weather may prevent the shipping company from dropping by your home to collect the item. The rough seas can be very dangerous for ships to navigate, and they may have to delay the sail to a day or two. Sometimes incorrect information provided by the customer can be a hindrance. Some of them provide the wrong address! Speaking of customers, a number of them do not show up at the appointed time, and this may pose a huge problem for the delivery as well. International shipping companies cannot hand the vehicle over to just about anyone. If you cannot be there to pick up or see the vehicle off, then you need to designate a representative. All these things only mean one thing: don’t immediately blame your shipping courier if the item doesn’t arrive at your most preferred time.

Real-time Tracking of the Delivery

Many years ago, shipping companies and their clients depended on a wait-and-see approach during pickup and delivery. It takes days or even weeks before they could know for themselves if the delivery was successful or not. Worse, because e-mails were still nonexistent, the only ways they could be updated is through a phone call, which wasn’t cheap, especially if they needed to call long-distance numbers.

Times have changed since then, and plenty of technologies now help these companies to provide a more efficient service to their clients. For one, they can keep track of the movements of the vehicles in real time.

One of the most reliable technologies added to delivery trucks these days is the global positioning system (GPS). This is a tool that feeds on-time data to the satellite. The information is then transmitted into the system or network that is being overseen by the shipping company.

The kind of information that is generated by the GPS depends on its design, but usually the software tells a lot about the routes being taken by the delivery trucks and the time being spent from one point to another. In the process, shipping firms are able to properly map out routes to help save time and gasoline, as well as to quicken the delivery. So far, many countries are now capable of running GPS, so companies can now monitor deliveries conveniently.

Further, the shipping companies give this real-time tracking mechanism as a bonus to their clients by sending them e-mail notifications through their PCs or their mobile devices such as mobile phones. GPS also proves to be a much cheaper option than satellite videography, though the latter gives more satisfaction to customers since they can see the actual movements of the truck.