A method and apparatus is disclosed for providing a metering site transceiver (12 or 15) with the ability to operate in a mobile back-up network (26) to signal utility consumption data that would otherwise be transmitted to a fixed receiver (30) in a fixed network AMR system. A mobile collection back-up capability allows a vehicle collection system (26, 27) to be used to read the remote meters (11, 14) in the fixed network, when a gateway (30) is detected as not communicating with the site transceiver (12 or 15).