Tracking Your Motorcycle Shipment

Once you have booked a motorcycle shipment with a reputable motorcycle shipping company, you should be able to track the progress of your motorcycle shipment. Companies, depending on the professionalism and their investment in infrastructure, offer different solutions. But what does tracking your motorcycle shipment entail?

The one-man-shipping-outfit will probably give you his cell phone number with the promise to call you on a regular basis to give you updates. This may or may not happen. If he forgets or gets tied up and you attempt to call him, you will probably get his voice mail with a mailbox that is full and cannot accept messages.

Companies with a few trucks will probably have a customer service agent to track the motorcycle shipment for you. You call the company and they place a call to the driver, asking where he is and what his ETA is. This can probably be done online through their customer service web portal or by email as well.

The most professional and technology-savvy companies will probably offer you an online option to track the progress of your motorcycle shipment. You are provided with a unique tracking number, which you input online and get a real-time location for your shipment. This is a convenient option that puts even the most anxious shipper at ease.

So how does online real-time tracking work? Well, each truck is fitted with a navigation transponder. The truck’s location is submitted by a satellite to computer software that runs the tracking service. Your motorcycle shipment is assigned a unique bar code number. This bar code is scanned when the shipment is loaded to a truck, when it offloads and when the shipment is stored for later reloading.

Perhaps you’ll find that your shipment is not moving. Each time the shipper hits refresh on his computer, he expects to see the motorcycle in a different location. That is not always the case. Keep in mind that truck drivers have limits to their allowable daily and weekly driving hours. In addition, there are other motorcycles on the truck and the driver is loading and offloading all the time.

Online tracking of your motorcycle shipment is a convenient way to know where your bike is at any given point in time. Ensure that your chosen motorcycle shipper provides online tracking options for the smoothest experience possible.