The labels
A tracking device, in the shape of a label.
A smart tracking label is a printable, paper-thin label with a radio inside. It goes on the outside of a package like any other label, and from the moment it is activated with a tap of a phone, it reports the package’s position as it travels — no charger, no pairing, no reader to install at your sites.
ShipTrace ships two kinds. They differ in how the position is established, and that difference is worth understanding — so we never hide it.
Two kinds
Cellular reports itself. Bluetooth is sighted.
Both are real observations, and the map draws both honestly. What differs is who does the reporting.
Cellular
It reports its own position
A cellular label works out where it is and sends that position over the mobile network, wherever it has coverage — no reader, no bystander, nothing to be passed by. Fixes are tight, usually accurate to tens of metres, and they keep coming on a twenty-minute interval by default.
Because it depends on nothing around it, a cellular label keeps reporting from the back of a truck on a motorway and from a yard nobody visits. This is the label for the shipment you cannot afford to lose sight of.
Bluetooth
It is sighted as it travels
A Bluetooth label announces itself, and the tracking network reports where it was heard — by a reader in a depot, or by a phone that happens to pass. It costs less and lasts longer, and a sighting places the package within a few hundred metres rather than a few dozen.
Sightings arrive when the label is near the network, so they cluster around depots, cities and busy roads. This is the label for volume: enough to know the lane is moving.
A 12 metre fix and a 710 metre sighting are both true. They are not the same claim.
So ShipTrace draws each one at its real size on the map, as geography rather than as a fixed dot that lies at every zoom level but one. A soft claim must never look like a hard one — that is the single easiest way for a tracking product to mislead the person relying on it.
Choosing
Which label goes on which box?
There is no wrong answer, only a cost-of-not-knowing question. This is how our customers usually decide.
Choose cellular when one box matters
The shipment you cannot afford to lose sight of: high-value freight, a one-off move, the crate a whole project is waiting on. It reports on its own, wherever it has mobile coverage, on a twenty-minute interval by default.
Choose Bluetooth for volume
Enough labels to put one on every box in a lane, at a price that allows it. Sightings are coarser and depend on the network being nearby — what you get is the shape of the lane moving, at a cost that scales.
Mix them on one map
Most customers run both: cellular on the shipments that keep somebody awake, Bluetooth on the flow. The portal draws them together and always says which kind of claim you are reading.
Buying labels
Labels arrive in the post, and the portal keeps count.
No hardware order forms and no sales cycle per box — labels are a consumable, and ShipTrace treats them like one.
Bought by the pack
Labels are ordered from inside the portal by card, priced per label against your own agreed rates, with every order kept in your history.
Counted for you
ShipTrace tracks how many labels we have shipped you, how many your team has activated, and how many are left before you should order more.
Replenished, if you want
Set a threshold and ShipTrace reorders on your saved card before you run out. Off by default, owner-only, and always visible in your order history.
Tag. Trace. Deliver.
Put a label on something and watch it move.
Tell us what you ship and we will recommend a mix of labels, set up your organization, and send your first pack out.