IN Brief:
- Boluda Maritime Terminals will deploy TMEIC Pulse Mobile at Tenerife to manage truck interactions from prearrival checks through gate and yard activity.
- The platform is designed to work with the terminal’s existing TOS, PCS, and other technology rather than requiring their replacement.
- TMEIC says previous deployments have resolved up to 80% of truck issues before vehicles reach a terminal gate.
Boluda Shipping is moving more truck processing away from the physical gate at its Tenerife terminal, introducing TMEIC’s Pulse Mobile platform to handle prearrival validation, exception management, gate activity, and yard coordination.
The system will be implemented by Boluda Maritime Terminals without replacing the terminal’s existing terminal operating system, port community system, or other core technology. Instead, Pulse Mobile is intended to sit across those platforms and provide a common process around the truck journey from the point at which work is assigned through arrival, terminal activity, and departure.
The operating problem is familiar across container terminals. A truck may reach the gate only for staff to discover that a booking reference is incorrect, documentation is incomplete, container status has changed, or information held by the haulier does not match the terminal system. By then, an administrative issue has become a physical traffic problem.
A vehicle waiting in an access lane can restrict capacity for following trucks while staff investigate the exception. Several such cases arriving close together can create queues outside the terminal, extend driver dwell time, and increase pressure on gate staff during vessel or yard peaks.
Boluda’s planned process moves more of that work earlier. Carriers and terminal staff will be able to validate information before the truck reaches Tenerife, giving both sides an opportunity to correct discrepancies while the vehicle is still away from the access lanes.
The gate then becomes more heavily focused on physical access and verification rather than resolving paperwork or data issues that could have been identified remotely. This does not remove exceptions, but it changes where they are expected to be handled.
TMEIC says previous Pulse Mobile deployments have resolved up to 80% of issues before trucks reach the gate. That is a supplier-reported figure drawn from other implementations rather than measured performance at Tenerife, where the platform has yet to establish its own operating record.
The more important feature for Boluda is the separation of information processing from scarce gate space. Terminals may have invested heavily in lanes, kiosks, barriers, printers, identification equipment, and staffed booths, yet much of the delay around those assets can still be caused by information rather than physical inspection.
Moving administrative interaction onto a digital platform can allow the terminal to use gate infrastructure primarily for tasks that genuinely have to take place when the vehicle arrives. Access control, identification, and physical safety checks remain part of the process, while booking and transaction exceptions can increasingly be dealt with earlier.
The system is also intended to follow the truck beyond entry. Yard coordination is included in the platform scope, linking the gate transaction with the work the vehicle is expected to perform after access has been granted.
That connection matters because faster entry does not automatically produce faster truck turnaround. A vehicle can move smoothly through the gate and still wait inside the terminal if a container is inaccessible, lifting equipment is unavailable, or yard traffic is poorly sequenced.
Providing consistent information on the truck’s intended task gives terminal planners another input for coordinating the physical operation. The practical value will depend on how effectively that information is integrated with container location, equipment availability, and the terminal’s existing planning systems.
Boluda has chosen an overlay approach rather than a wholesale systems replacement. Established terminals typically have substantial investment embedded in their TOS, port community connections, access systems, and customer interfaces. Replacing those platforms merely to improve the gate would create disruption well beyond the original problem.
A vendor-neutral layer can be introduced more selectively, although it still depends on reliable interfaces with every system supplying operational data. Incorrect or delayed information upstream will continue to create exceptions regardless of how efficiently the mobile interface presents it.
The technology also transfers some responsibility earlier into the trucking process. Drivers, dispatchers, or carrier offices need to interact with the digital workflow before arrival if the terminal is to benefit from upstream validation. Adoption across the trucking community therefore becomes part of the operating project rather than a separate communications exercise.
Boluda Maritime Terminals operates across several Spanish ports, but the current implementation is specifically at Tenerife. There is no confirmed network-wide rollout in the announcement, making the Canary Islands operation the appropriate place to judge whether the process produces measurable changes in truck dwell and gate congestion.
The physical terminal will still face the same fundamental constraints after implementation: finite yard space, equipment availability, vessel peaks, and road traffic. Pulse Mobile is aimed at preventing avoidable information problems from consuming capacity within that system.
Its useful measure will therefore be operational rather than digital. If fewer trucks arrive with unresolved transactions, the gate should spend less time acting as an administrative troubleshooting point and more time moving vehicles into and out of the terminal. Tenerife will provide the first evidence of whether that shift works under Boluda’s normal traffic conditions.
