Dad Central

FedEx SenseAware and the Race Across America

Photo by: Brian Palmer

Neither have you.

I’ll start there, because neither of us have ever heard of the Race Across America, also called “The World’s Toughest Bicycle Race. And I reckon many of you have no idea what SenseAware is. I’ve got a handle on all of it now thanks to Dad Central, FedEx, and the Ohio CycleWorks bike team who competed in the race to raise money for the Akron Children’s Hospital. FedEx Custom Critical, a company I once worked hand-in-hand with, was a proud supporter of the Akron Children’s Hospital and the Ohio CycleWorks team.

The race is ridiculous, crossing the whole of the country in less than a week in the dead of summer.  I can’t imagine ever putting my body through such a test of endurance — if I’m forced to ride one of those low-rider stationary bike at the hotel gym when the treadmills are all occupied (as I was during our road trip last week) I get about 10 minutes in before tossing in the towel, literally and figuratively.

SenseAware is a wickedly cool real time tracking tool for critical parcels that allows the parties involved to monitor temperature, exposure to light, humidity, barometric pressure, and more factors that may not matter when you’re mailing a teddy bear to your young nephew, but are of the utmost importance should he be awaiting an organ for a transplant.  The Ohio CycleWorks team tested out the SenseAware tracking by allowing spectators to track their movements as they made their way from CA to MD this month.  The race is over now and the team made it to Annapolis with, luckily for them, a trip that didn’t appear to see much in the way of insanely humid days.  But that 91 degree afternoon in Bluff City, MO probably didn’t feel too great!

Check out some of the team’s photos from along their journey as well as screenshots of the amazing SenseAware tracking platform on their Tumblr page.

I worked with FedEx exclusively for a couple of years right before leaving cubicle life to be an at-home dad four years ago this summer.  I was a member of the financial team responsible for managing the day to day operations of their many retirement plans.  I’ve dined in some of the FedEx HR big wig homes, gobbled up ribs from Rendezvous and Corky’s (okay, that has nothing to do with FedEx specifically, but man was that good eatin’), and I’ve toured the Memphis FedEx hub at 1am when all the moving parts of the gigantic Fedex machine, including the countless planes that take over Memphis International Airport, are moving at lightening speed.  They are good people who do amazing work to get packages from points a to points b quickly and safely. The new SenseAware tracking platform is another mind-boggling invention from the leaders in the shipping biz.

Hopefully you’ll never need to log in and use SenseAware, but if you do you’ll feel a level of comfort knowing that critical shipment is in extremely good hands.

*I received compensation from FedEx for covering the use of SenseAware® technology during the 2012 Race Across America. My ideas and opinions relayed in this blog post and any related Twitter discussions are the my own and are not provided by FedEx or its affiliates and subsidiaries.  The opportunity to write this post was provided by Dad Central

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