Remote yard monitoring in Memphis

Local and live

Where five railroads meet the river

Memphis sits where I-40 and I-55 cross the Mississippi River, with I-240 looping traffic around the city and I-69 planned to follow the same path. Five Class I railroads keep yards in Memphis: CSX's Leewood Yard, Union Pacific's Sargent Yard, Norfolk Southern's Forrest Yard, BNSF's Yale Yard and Canadian National's Harrison Yard, among ten freight rail facilities in the city altogether. Memphis International Airport, which doubles as FedEx's global air hub, is the busiest cargo airport in the United States, and the Port of Memphis runs 15 miles along the river with 68 water-fronted facilities and 37 terminal facilities for transferring cargo.

That much freight moving through one place is a target. The Memphis Police Department reported commercial burglaries down about 40 percent in 2025 (197 compared with 338 over the same months in 2024), along with thefts from train cars down 73 percent and from tractor-trailers down 46 percent, improvements the chief tied to working with railroads on train scheduling and a shared camera-footage program. Even with that drop, suspects cut open a gate lock at a Shelby Drive business one Saturday afternoon in September 2025 and loaded 47 televisions into a box truck, though they left 23 behind and escaped with the other 24. For a yard holding loaded trailers, that kind of opening is still there after dark or on a weekend when nobody is watching the gate.

At a Memphis yard, Sigma puts a live agent on every camera around the clock, 365 days a year, so a cut gate lock or a trailer door left open gets noticed as it happens instead of the next business day. Movement after hours triggers the AI's person and vehicle detection, the agent pulls up the live video to confirm what's happening, and a live, instant talk-down goes out through the site's speakers before police are brought in with recorded clips if needed. Truck and trailer logs and visual seal checks are available too, through Yard Operations, for loads moving between the rail yards and the interstates.

Also covering Germantown, Bartlett, Collierville, Millington, Arlington, Lakeland, Southaven, Olive Branch.