Patent ID: 7746228

Claim:
A receiving station for tracking a shipping container, comprising: a control system coupled to a database; a communication interface coupled to the control system, wherein the control system is adapted to receive shipping container tracking messages over a communication network via the communication interface; wherein the control system is adapted to: receive an itinerary for a shipping container having an identification indicia; store the itinerary of shipping containers in the database associated with the shipping container's identification indicia; receive shipping container tracking messages comprising identification indicia of shipping containers over the communication network; store the shipping container tracking messages in the database according to their respective identification indicia; search through the database to determine when a shipping container tracking message was last received over the communication network for each of the shipping containers according to their identification indicia; and determine if a shipping container is lost based on whether the shipping container tracking message for a shipping container was received according to the stored itinerary for the shipping container.