Motorola

The Canadian National Railway Company (CN) has multiple intermodal terminals — the transfer stations where shipping containers are moved from rail lines to truck chassis and vice-versa. As intermodal transport grew at a rapid pace in recent years, the CN team sought to decrease congestion and increase throughput at its vital Brampton terminal.

With the previous process, as chassis passed through the Brampton entry and exit gates, identification numbers were recorded manually. This system sometimes caused errors, and made it difficult to pinpoint chassis status. With the assistance of its partner Bell Canada, CN implemented a successful automated RFID system. This paper discusses the challenges CN faced and the solutions at which it arrived using Motorola's all-weather RFID Cargo Tags, XR400 multi-protocol RFID readers, and rugged MC9060-G RFID mobile computers.