Fleet management company Samsara announced in June 2026 a business-card-sized adhesive tracking label designed to give shippers real-time visibility into cargo location — including during the stretches between ports and distribution centers where shipments typically go dark.
The Samsara Tracking Label contains a zinc battery and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) radio that, once activated, transmits location data for approximately 45 days. In sleep mode, the label can remain dormant for up to nine months. Unlike Samsara’s earlier tracking hardware, the label is designed to be disposable after a single shipment, removing the need for customers to recover it at delivery.
The label works by piggybacking on Samsara’s existing network of cameras and sensors already installed across customer vehicle fleets, using those devices as Bluetooth receivers to pinpoint a label’s location at any given time. David Gal, Samsara’s vice president of connected equipment, said this network is the key differentiator from competing approaches. He noted that RFID-based tracking — such as a plan UPS announced in April 2026 — depends on a shipment remaining near a fixed scanner, whereas Samsara’s mobile sensor network continues to track cargo even if it leaves a standard route.
The product is an evolution of Samsara’s earlier “Asset Tag,” a wine cork-sized tracker that offered real-time location but was too bulky and costly for routine use on lower-value goods and wasn’t suited to one-way shipments.
Gal said the label is intended primarily for “critical shipments” by large companies. Beyond theft prevention, he said real-time data could allow companies to respond faster to delays or route changes. “It shifts the paradigm from reactive to proactive,” he said. “If you know something’s delayed, you can get ahead of it.”
Gal also pointed directly to cargo theft as a target use case. “I have a feeling that we’ll bust some crime rings with this,” he said.
Source: TechCrunch