When most people hear ‘asset tracking’, they picture GPS devices on vehicles, tracking speed, routes, and driver behaviour. But what if your most valuable assets aren’t powered at all?
If your operations rely on cages, stillages, frames, bins or other non-powered assets, you already know how hard it can be to keep track of them. These assets often go missing, sit idle for too long, or get stuck at customer sites, costing time, money and resources.
That’s where a platform built specifically for non-powered asset tracking makes all the difference. Unlike generic vehicle trackers or basic GPS devices, a non-powered asset (NPA)-focused solution gives you the features you actually need, without the ones you don’t.
Why a Purpose-Built Platform for Non-Powered Assets Makes a Difference
Here are seven features that make a dedicated NPA tracking platform the smarter choice.
1. Smarter Inventory Visibility
Non-powered assets like cages and stillages are constantly on the move, being loaded, transported, dropped off or stored. Without a clear view of where they are and how many are available at any given location, you risk bottlenecks, underutilisation or even over-ordering.
A purpose-built platform for NPAs gives you accurate, up-to-date inventory counts by site. For example, if a business typically uses 300 stillages but only has 190 on hand, the system can alert you before the shortage starts affecting operations. Similarly, if dozens of units are sitting idle at a customer location, you’ll know and you can retrieve or redeploy them.
This visibility helps streamline logistics and avoid unnecessary asset purchases or rentals, delivering immediate savings and better service continuity.
2. Site-Level and Indoor Tracking
Many tracking solutions are great at telling you if an asset has arrived at a general location, but that’s where they stop. For non-powered assets, knowing whether they’re in the right part of a facility can be just as important as knowing they’ve arrived.
A stillage may be marked as ‘on site’, but if it’s hidden in the wrong zone or stacked in a storage area where no one’s looking, it may as well be lost. Platforms designed for NPAs often include indoor and zone-based tracking, letting you pinpoint assets within specific areas of a facility.
For example, you could set up a geofence to track when frames move from the loading dock to the repair zone, or from storage into production. This level of detail supports faster workflows, fewer delays and less time spent searching.
3. Environmental Monitoring
If your assets carry sensitive materials like food, chemicals, pharmaceuticals or electronics, knowing their environmental conditions is critical.
A tracking platform that is built especially for non-powered assets supports temperature and humidity monitoring, helping you detect when an asset is exposed to conditions that could spoil the contents or damage the equipment. For instance, if a cage carrying chilled goods is left outside a cold room for too long, the system can notify staff before the product is compromised.
Even for less sensitive cargo, temperature data can help spot trends. Repeated overheating could indicate poor handling or equipment failure, which can then be addressed with corrective action.
4. Dwell Time Insights
Assets that sit still for too long create unnecessary costs. When a frame or stillage remains at a customer site longer than expected, that’s money tied up in idle equipment, and often no one knows until it’s too late.
A non-powered asset platform tracks dwell time automatically, giving you the ability to set rules around how long assets should stay in one place. Let’s say your standard turnaround for cages at a delivery site is 72 hours. If that window is exceeded, an alert can prompt your team to follow up or schedule collection.
Over time, this data helps refine logistics planning, improve customer compliance and reduce the time assets spend out of circulation. For large fleets, even modest improvements in dwell time can lead to significant cost reductions and better asset availability.
5. Automatic Asset Status Labelling
Labelling assets manually is time-consuming and prone to human error. And when you’re managing hundreds or thousands of moving items, that manual process simply doesn’t scale.
A platform built for non-powered assets use movement, location and timing data to automatically assign status labels such as ‘In Transit’, ‘On Customer Site’, ‘Idle’, or ‘In Use’. For example, a stillage that hasn’t moved in seven days can be flagged as idle, prompting review. One that just crossed into a warehouse might be marked as ‘Available for Use’.
This level of automation saves time and ensures consistency across the entire asset pool. It also makes reporting and decision-making easier, especially when coordinating across multiple teams or locations.
6. Fit-for-Purpose Data Reporting
Vehicle tracking platforms typically flood you with data about routes, fuel levels, engine diagnostics, driver behaviours. That’s great for managing a truck, but not for a non-powered frame.
A non-powered asset tracking solution focuses only on what matters: movement, location, condition and status. This approach keeps the interface clean and actionable, making it easier to focus on the insights that help you make decisions.
Plus, collecting less data means lower connectivity costs and longer battery life. For example, instead of sending data every few seconds like a vehicle might, asset trackers can report once every few hours or when movement is detected, extending battery life to several years and significantly reducing maintenance requirements.
7. Built for What You’re Actually Tracking
It seems obvious, but it’s easy to forget: a stillage isn’t a truck. So why use the same platform to track both?
Most asset tracking systems on the market are vehicle-centric, with tools designed for driver behaviour, fuel management and route optimisation. When used for NPAs, these platforms often fall short, or worse, charge you for features you’ll never use.
By choosing a solution tailored to non-powered asset tracking, you’re investing in functionality that directly supports your operations: indoor tracking, dwell time alerts, asset labelling and environmental metrics. It’s not just more efficient, it’s also more cost-effective, since you’re not paying for unnecessary extras.
If your business depends on assets like cages, frames, stillages or reusable containers, you can’t afford to treat them like vehicles. Using the wrong platform leads to poor visibility, higher costs and missed opportunities for optimisation.
A purpose-built platform for non-powered assets helps you track what matters, cut down on waste, and make better use of what you already own. With the right system in place, your operations become smoother, your teams more efficient, and your bottom line stronger.
This is especially important as supply chain leaders across industries continue to invest in digital tools that improve visibility and responsiveness. According to McKinsey & Company, companies that digitise their supply chains can expect up to a 30 percent improvement in operational efficiency and a 75 percent reduction in lost sales due to better product availability.
Ready to take control of your asset fleet? Talk to us about how Thinxtra’s dedicated tracking platform for non-powered assets can help you save time, cut costs and operate with confidence.
