Manheim Auto Auction car locator technology aids auto transporters

We have all spent hours looking for that lost car that we needed to complete our load and thought with all of the technology available today certainly someone can come up with a way to solve this. I heard a rumor when I was at the Southern California Auto Auction that there was a system at the Houston Hobby auction that tracked the cars with a chip in the car so you could always find the car. I made it a point to investigate on this trip to Houston. From my quick look at the system it looks like it relies on the last location that the car was scanned with one of their hand scanners but they are scanning pretty often including each car as it comes through the lanes and when it exits the gate. I stood there and watched three people come in and get the most current location of their misplaced cars and for most of them the scan was from the day before. You can search by last part of the vin or by the run #. It shows a grid of the auction and gives you an arrow where the last scan was. I think this is a huge step in the right direction for auto transporters to cut down on costly delays at the auto auctions. Hopefully this will lead to putting chips in the cars so we can get real-time current locations.

This locator system is web-based so if one of you influential auto transporters out there can get Manheim Brass to give us the logins then drivers with laptops can locate their cars anytime they need to and when a driver calls a dispatcher on the weekend the dispatcher could go to his or her computer 3 states away and give the driver the car location.