Supply chain visibility
Supply chain visibility software for fresh produce importers
Most supply chain visibility software is built for manufacturers and retailers moving freight across trucks, rail, ocean and parcel, and it is priced for them. A produce importer’s supply chain is narrower and less forgiving: a few carriers, reefers sold before they land, suppliers who email their paperwork. Trackberry is visibility built for that shape, with a published price.
Free while in beta, then €15 a container · No commitment · No card required
- Carriers supported
- 435
- Shipments tracked
- 287
- Built for
- Fresh produce
What visibility means at an importer’s scale
Supply chain visibility is usually sold as a map of everything in motion. For an importer it comes down to three narrower questions, asked every morning: which shipments changed since yesterday, which of them need somebody to act, and are the documents in order for the ones about to land. Software that answers “where is everything” and leaves those three to a person reading the map has not removed the work. It has moved it.
The data behind any container visibility platform comes from the same few places: carrier milestones, AIS vessel positions and terminal events. What differs is what the software does with it. For perishable cargo the useful version is cold chain visibility, which means knowing where the fruit is and how much of its life is left early enough to still decide something about it.
That is also where our view stops. We don’t see inside a reefer container. The unit’s own readout, reefer monitoring, comes from the carrier’s telematics, and Trackberry holds only the setpoint declared on the bill of lading. We explain where each piece of tracking data comes from in the container tracking guide, which is worth reading before you buy anything, this included.
What you get
Visibility at the scale of an import desk, not a control tower.
Ocean and air shipments in one list
435 carriers supported, ocean and air. Containers start from a container or bill of lading number, air freight from an air waybill. One list and one vocabulary for the same event, instead of a bookmark folder of carrier portals with a different login each.
Exceptions, not a map to watch
Trackberry flags the shipments that have stopped making progress: ETA drift, an arrival already overdue, a box sitting at the terminal, a rollover, tracking that has gone quiet. Each user chooses which alerts reach them in the app, by push or by email.
Documents on the same record as the tracking
Packing lists, bills of lading, commercial invoices and phytosanitary certificates are read out of your inbox and filed against the shipment. The invoice is cross-checked against its packing list, and quantities that disagree are flagged for review before the shipment is approved.
Demurrage and detention clocks
Free-time clocks per ocean container, counted from actual discharge, gate-out and empty return against the free days you set per carrier or per shipment. An email goes out two days before demurrage free time ends, and again on the last free day.
A tracking page for your customers
Each shipment can have a public tracking page that your customer follows without an account and can subscribe to by email. The “where is my fruit” call becomes a link you send once.
Into the tools you already run
Your shipment list exports to Excel, ETAs publish as a calendar feed for Outlook, Google or Apple Calendar, and ERP integration is quoted against the system you run. We’re not trying to become your system of record.
If an enterprise platform is also on your shortlist, we’ve written up how Trackberry compares with project44 and FourKites, with sources and a plain list of the cases where they are the better buy. The rest are in the full list of comparisons. Our own price is on the pricing page.
A good fit if
- You import fresh produce by sea, and sometimes by air, on more than one carrier.
- Your team is a handful of people, not a logistics department with a control tower.
- Your shipment documents arrive by email, formatted differently by each supplier.
- You want to know the price before you take a call.
Probably not if
- You run road, rail and parcel alongside ocean at volume. An enterprise multimodal platform fits better.
- You need freight booking, rate negotiation or customs filing. This does none of those.
- You need live reefer telemetry. We hold the setpoint off the paperwork, not a feed from the unit.
- You need an on-premise deployment, an SLA or an account team.
Questions buyers ask
- What does it cost?
- Free while we’re in beta, with no card and no commitment. After that €15 per container, billed on containers that ship rather than on seats or a monthly subscription, so a quiet month costs you a quiet month. ERP integration is quoted separately, against the system you already run. All prices exclude VAT.
- Which carriers and modes do you cover?
- 435 ocean and air carriers today, all listed at /carriers. We don’t track road freight or parcels. Produce import is an ocean problem with some air, and that is what the product covers.
- How is this different from an enterprise visibility platform?
- Enterprise platforms are built for shippers moving freight across many modes and business units, and are usually bought through a demo and a negotiated contract. Trackberry covers ocean and air for produce importers, reads the shipment documents as well as the milestones, and publishes its price. Our comparison pages go through the differences with project44 and FourKites, with sources.
- How do alerts reach us?
- In the app, by push notification and by email. Each user picks which kinds of alert reach them on which channel, so the person who handles demurrage can get free-time warnings by email without everybody else getting them too.
- What does it not do?
- It does not book freight, negotiate rates or file customs entries, and it does not replace your ERP. It does not stream reefer temperatures either, since the setpoint it shows comes off the bill of lading. Anything that means transacting with a carrier happens elsewhere.
- How long until it is useful?
- Forward one shipment’s documents and you’ll see it working. Most of the setup is deciding which mailbox forwards to us. There is no data migration, because the history builds from the documents and container numbers you already receive.
See your own shipments in it
Twenty minutes and a handful of container numbers. You’ll see your own shipments across carriers, with their documents and any open alerts, rather than a demo dataset.