Nick Patrick, co-founder and CEO of Radar, first encountered the challenges of location tracking while working at an on-demand handyman service. "We needed to dispatch workers and know if they were going to be at the right place and on time, and it was very challenging and expensive to do with Google Maps," Patrick said.
Patrick’s biggest difficulties stemmed from the lack of integrated solutions that would combine location tracking with all of the team’s other planning and dispatching needs. "We had to build all of that ourselves, and at the time we just used Stripe for payments and Twilio for communications," he said. "We needed a location infrastructure alternative to Mapbox that was full-stack and developer-friendly. That was the genesis of the idea for Radar."
Radar’s geofencing, routing optimization and tracking capabilities were a natural fit for 3PLs and carriers looking to better utilize and integrate location infrastructure.
"A lot of logistics companies underutilize location because other providers are too expensive and don’t offer the developer tools for APIs that we do," said Patrick. "We want to be the cost-effective, all-in-one solution."
Especially in today’s freight market, many 3PLs and carriers are struggling to eliminate deadheading and maximize operational efficiency. "If you don’t have complete tracking visibility today, you’re guessing about where your workers or vehicles are in the field. That guesswork leads to more errors and less efficacy," Patrick said.
Radar has spoken to chief technology officers and information specialists who are looking for better location infrastructure for fleet management, including maps, routing APIs, geocoding APIs, location tracking and geofencing.
"Companies like Turvo and Milk Moovement have benefited from the cost savings and operational efficiencies of all-in-one location infrastructure that spans geofencing and maps APIs," said Patrick. "At Radar, what we tell customers is, ‘Hey, we can cut your Maps bill in half.’ That frees up some budget to innovate elsewhere and become more profitable."
According to Patrick, "Unlike competitors like Google Maps APIs and Mapbox, we offer powerful developer tools that can detect fraud and location spoofing, while also providing routing optimization and geofencing for accurately locating assets."
When it comes to all-in-one solutions, Radar’s capabilities are unique. In order to understand where workers or assets or vehicles are in the field, logistics companies must have both location tracking and geofencing components. "We’re really the only one that does both the mapping side – showing stuff on a map or calculating a route – but also the geofencing and location tracking side," Patrick added.
TMS providers and other companies in the logistics space looking for flexibility are often hampered by the high cost of dealing with multiple vendors and software integrations. "What we do, in contrast to some of the other mapping platforms out there, is tracking a vehicle, tracking an asset, being able to store that data and analyze it," Patrick said. "With our geofencing platform, if you want to stream location data to us, we can store that, process it and help you analyze it."
"At the end of the day, we’re more of a developer tool than an app," said Patrick. Fleet management or workforce management apps, like Samsara, rely on Google Maps for routing, geocoding and location tracking. "We’re a developer tool at our core, so there’s flexibility there. These are building blocks for you to build your own systems efficiently. We work closely with our customers to help them with whatever they’re trying to accomplish," Patrick explained.
The Radar model is unique in its full-stack approach, and this flexibility lends itself to a huge variety of applications in the transportation industry. "Think of us like a Stripe or a Twilio but for location," Patrick said. "Stripe revolutionized payments by being developer first, with simple, transparent, affordable pricing. We’re doing the same thing in the logistics space."
When it comes to the future, Radar intends to push the limits of what’s possible with location services: accuracy, efficiency and reliability. "We’re working on micro geofences. Imagine being able to understand which parking space somebody was parked in or which lane somebody’s in," Patrick said. "That kind of accuracy means you can eliminate so many uncertainties and focus on being more profitable."
