Techniques are described with regard to determining and controlling a location and status of assets directly and/or indirectly. The techniques may be used to track and control the respective locations and status of any number of objects. Applications include but are not limited to tracking dry and refrigerated trailers and their status in a supply-chain yard; tracking pallets and boxes and their status in a warehouse; tracking items in a retail environment; tracking finished goods and work in progress in and around a manufacturing plant; tracking vehicles in a parking lot; tracking cargo and equipment at an airport; tracking equipment in a lay down yard; etc. In all cases the laborious and error prone data gathering is replaced with automated data collection methods reducing cost, increasing accuracy, and increasing efficiency.