Lift trucks: Sky-Trax, Rush Tracking Systems announce merger

Rush Tracking Systems, a provider of advanced tracking solutions, software and services for manufacturing and warehouse operations, and Sky-Trax Inc., a provider of patented real-time location systems for tracking goods, vehicles and guiding autonomous vehicles in any size facility, announced that they have merged to form a single company.

Rush Tracking Systems and Sky-Trax officials said the objective of this deal was to form a vertically integrated provider of smart truck tracking systems for manufacturing and warehousing environments.

The deal was made official on July 8.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Following completion of the deal, the companies will continue to maintain their individual names and sell products and services under their own brands. The companies added that they expect “rapid growth” through direct sales to top customers, coupled with growth from a global network of Value-Added Resellers and Original Equipment Manufacturers.

Rush Tracking Systems Director of Marketing Paige O’Brien told Modern that the impetus for this deal was to “accelerate growth and solidify leadership in the Smart Truck Solution space.” And Sarah Brisbin, Vice President of Marketing at Sky-Trax said that there was not a specific “need” for this deal, as much as an opportunity to bring two talented companies together, adding that this deal had been in the works for less than six months.

When asked what the biggest takeaways of this deal are for customers of both companies, she explained that the merged entities offer up a larger team with a full suite of Smart Truck solutions with financing to accelerate growth both domestically and internationally. She added that Rush Tracking and Systems and Sky-Trax’ together have more than 100 customers.

The biggest improvements will be in the variety of solutions we offer for optimizing safety, asset utilization, labor productivity and inventory accuracy as well as improved support, services, and accessibility to resources,” said Sky-Trax’ Brisbin. “With the data and business intelligence tools we offer, our customers gain the ability to implement improvements to their operations to improve accountability, productivity and accuracy.”

Officials from both companies said that this new company delivers a comprehensive suite of patented smart truck tracking solutions which optimize personnel safety, asset utilization, labor productivity and inventory accuracy within manufacturing and warehouse operations. And by automatically collecting real-time lift truck load and location visibility data, they explained that customers are able to reduce or eliminate the inaccuracies associated with driver input of data, adding that the resulting business intelligence data also allows customers to gain the insights needed to implement immediate improvements in accountability, safety and productivity.

What’s more, they also said that these solutions automatically identify the load on the front of a lift truck by leveraging either bar code, RFID, or optical data collection technologies and then track the position of the material handling device via Sky-Trax’s optical indoor positioning system.

“Sky-Trax is a natural fit with Rush Tracking Systems, given the companies’ synergistic product offerings, engineering, business and industry expertise,” said Anna Kovalkova, Vice President of Pharos Capital Group, owner of Rush Tracking Systems in conjunction with Pharos affiliates, in a statement. “This business combination is consistent with our original investment strategy in Rush and we will continue to look for additional complementary and synergistic businesses to roll into the new company.”

Mike Kinard, former CEO of Sky-Trax and CEO of the new company, added in the statement that with an installed base of several hundred trucks, and installations around the globe including the United States, Europe and New Zealand, the return has proven to be substantial since the deal was made official. He said that customers are experiencing at least 15 percent-to-20 percent improvement in productivity and more in many cases.

Sky-Trax’ Brisbin added that with Sky-Trax’s expertise in Optical technology real-time tracking solutions and Rush’s expertise in RFID Solutions, the merged company is now able to offer customers with a wider range of solutions that will fit their operational needs. Customers, she said, will also receive an enhanced ROI and through the merger the company is now able to improve its product cost while providing customers with deeper data sets they can apply to their operations to improve performance and their bottom lines.

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