How do you track your crates when they go out to customers?

This has been a growing headache for us over the past year as we've expanded our delivery network, and I feel like we're losing more crates than we're getting back from our retail customers. We send out hundreds of crates a week with products to various supermarkets and shops across Dubai and Abu Dhabi, and while most of them eventually come back, there's always a percentage that mysteriously disappear or get mixed up with other suppliers' containers. I was reading about how big FMCG companies manage their returnable packaging and it seems like they have pretty sophisticated tracking systems, but I'm not sure what's realistic for a mid-sized operation like ours. I'm thinking we need to invest in some proper reusable plastic crates for FMCG supply chain operations that can be easily identified with our branding and maybe even have some kind of tracking capability, whether that's RFID tags, barcodes, or just simple numbered labels that we can log in and out. The problem is I don't even know where to start with this, and I'm worried that any system we implement will be too complicated for our staff and customers to actually use consistently. Has anyone here successfully implemented a crate tracking system that actually works in practice, or do you just accept a certain level of loss as a cost of doing business? I'd love to hear what's actually practical rather than what looks good on paper.