Not a typical story. A medium-sized trucking company loses all knowledge of the whereabouts of one of its rigs. The driver, for reasons unknown, has walked off the job, abandoning the vehicle. Days later, the errant truck is tracked down. But the result is more than a late delivery: the truck’s cargo, 50,000 pounds of seafood, is ruined. One consequence is that the trucking company in question decided it was time to invest in the wireless technology that will let it track and trace all its vehicles on the road.

A great many companies—generally for less embarrassing reasons—are doing likewise. A major 2007 study by C. J. Driscoll Associates segments the trucking industry into early adopters, pragmatists, conservatives and skeptics. Adoption of wireless, Driscoll notes, is moving through the pragmatists and taking aim at the conservatives.

Similar results come from a recent eyefortransport survey, which shows an adoption trend moving steadily through the industry. The most common use trucking firms make of the technology, survey respondents report, is to track and trace their widely scattered assets: 37 percent report that they have implemented systems that do so; another 45 percent are in planning, testing pilots or identifying vendors. Two other uses stand out: communications with drivers and routing and scheduling optimization.

Where wireless and the trucking industry are concerned, industry sources believe they have passed the tipping point. Chris Purpura of Aeris Communication, a wireless network service provider in San Jose, California, reports, “Hardware costs are coming down; the network costs are coming down. At the same time, fuel costs are going up; labor is always a high-ticket item. The overall trends are for greater and greater adoption.”

In part, this reflects progress with the technology: Bruce Musselman, vice president for Industry Business Solutions at Sprint, acknowledges, “In the past, the networks never really had the bandwidth or the speed or the low latency to deliver really robust applications.” Now, he says, new networks have mastered these issues.

That push to wireless, many believe, will be pulled by customer expectations. Ralph Lieberthal, longstanding transportation and logistics expert at Motorola, notes, “FedEx and UPS have ‘spoiled’ it for everyone. They’ve created a customer expectation of real-time information about the status of their shipment. That’s the mentality out there; that’s what people are going to have to do.”

Three stories frame the capability statement of wireless and trucking.

Danny Loe, director of marketing and public relations at ABF Freight Systems in Fort Smith, Arkansas, describes a part of how the wireless system his firm provides its 6,700 drivers works. Each driver inputs pickup information—destination, size and more—into a hand-held micro-browser. That information automatically feeds back to ABF’s central system in Fort Smith, so that, Loe says, “We can start optimizing long-haul runs before the freight even gets back to the dock.” Loe is not the only one watching; ABF’s system is a glass pipeline that allows its customers to go to the company Web site and get real-time reports on shipment status.

Chris Purpura at Aeris likens the advantages of electronic-based dispatching to those of an 800-number call center. If all your customer calls go to a receptionist, he notes, he or she needs to figure out who should handle each and hope that whoever that may be is actually at their phone when the call gets put through. With a call center, every incoming call is queued and sent to the next available agent. In the trucking industry, Purpura adds, “If you have a big fleet—and you’re doing manual dispatch with no tracking, then your efficiency is going to be horrible. We’re talking millions of dollars.”

Bruce Stockton, vice president of maintenance and asset management at Con-way Truckload in Joplin, Missouri, points to the advantages of tracking truck location through the GPS that is part of the wireless system on his company’s 2,700 long-haul trucks. The system provides data on whether the load is running on time, or an hour late, or three hours late. As Stockton describes it, “If we’re behind because of weather or an accident, we can react to that. Relay the load to another driver; or put multiple drivers under the load to save the time a single driver would need to stop for a break. Worst case, we call the customer, say the truck is running behind and provide a new ETA.”

Things like driver communications, track and trace and scheduling optimization are the system advantages most commonly cited, but others come into play.

One is driver safety. Bruce Stockton at Con-way Truckload reports, “We’ve had drivers that were having a heart attack; they used the system to send us an alarm. We believe this system has saved lives.”

And another is vehicle security. Stockton says he isn’t sure if the number of truck theft has declined, “but it’s had an impact on which trucks are stolen. A truck with that system is less likely to be stolen.”

A third is fuel costs. This, Chris Purpura of Aeris says, “is a big one. If you’re idling your engines at McDonald’s, or taking a big truck at 70 miles an hour rather than 55, then you’re burning a lot more gallons per mile.” Estimates vary, but the general view is that monitoring driver behavior can provide a five to ten percent fuel savings.

That phrase—monitoring driver behavior—suggests a ‘red flag.’ How would famously independent long-haul truck drivers feel about having ‘Big Brother’ riding along in their cab? Several major trucking firms who confess to having had that concern say it simply didn’t materialize.

For one thing, not too many drivers are nostalgic for the days when they had to cadge fax or telephone use at a customer’s dispatch center in order to report a delivery. Now, Stockton adds, “They have an on-board system; they don’t have to talk to anybody or wait on hold if their manager was on another call.”

Craig Fiander, senior director, marketing, at ALK Technologies, a Princeton, New Jersey firm that offers routing and navigation solutions, points out, “Even for the set-run driver, the road is dynamic; so many things can happen: weather, traffic. Having the capability to hit a ‘detour’ button to avoid congestion is worth a lot. The ability to dynamically recalculate your ETA is important from a customer service standpoint.”

Brett Conner at Verizon reports that drivers are using the system to support their personal lives: “With a notebook computer, a PC card and the wireless network, they can take care of their lives: it may be a camera they’ve set up at home so they can see the kids before they go to bed at night; or handling email and paying their bills.”

The eyefortransport survey referenced above identified two trends within the market. First, there’s a move to voice communication, rather than text or email. The reason is simple enough: with voice communication, the driver doesn’t have to take a hand off the wheel or an eye off the road. Second, on-board communications devices are supplanting hand-held. Again, the reason is similar—to keep the driver free to focus on his primary task.

The technology itself appears to be stabilizing. Chris Purpura at Aeris says, “I don’t see major changes; I see a whole bunch of small ones.” One area he cites is the integration of real time navigation with real time traffic: “That really speaks to fuel savings: if the driver knows what to get to his next delivery that the freeway is clogged, and he can re-route ahead of time.

Hardware prices will continue to drop—one industry source speaks of the “Holy Grail” of a ruggedized handheld device at under $500.

Craig Fiander at ALK Technologies anticipates the development of “a lower-priced, pared-down device with fewer bells and whistles, but which covers the basic needs.” This, he says, will combine rugged specifications and wireless connectivity into a system that will let “smaller operators push the data back and forth.”

Some major firms are adding features.

Sean Bumgarner, director of industrial engineering at ABF in Fort Smith, Arkansas, comments: “It’s not so much adding as improving everything through the system.” One new feature, as of April the company will add software permitting signature capture with customers.

Con-way is working with Qualcomm on a beta test of a nationwide trucking map. Not obvious—unless you’re in the trucking industry—is that the automotive directional systems or software such as MapQuest is not of much use to a truck driver. The driver doesn’t need to know where you can safely take your Civic, but where he can take his 18-wheeler.

So, if the advantages are all that clear, why hasn’t everyone adopted?

Brett Conner, enterprise data solutions manager at Verizon Wireless, says, simply, “inertia. A lot of companies simply want to do business the way they’ve always done business.”

Motorola’s Lieberthal cites another factor: “I think the scary part is this: how do you integrate the technology with your back office?” Lieberthal adds, “There’s no point in getting data unless you know what you’re going to do with it.”

And, simply, not everyone’s need is the same. A company moving a low-value commodity that is not time-sensitive will not harvest an equal return on the technology.

Two large factors within the trucking industry also favor adoption.

One is manpower. Given that trucking and construction draw on a similar pool of workers, the decided national downtown in home building has eased for time the trucking industry’s concern with finding sufficient drivers. But that, many point out, is only temporary. Brett Conner of Verizon Wireless notes, “It’s a huge issue in transportation that the boomers will be retiring. That’s the macro trend across the society.” In consequence, Conner adds, “trucking companies—like everybody else—will need both higher retention and higher efficiency: how can they do the same job with fewer employees?”

Second—for those who haven’t heard—it’s tough times in the trucking industry. Brett Conner of Verizon Wireless notes, “Trucking is being impacted by the squeezing of margins, greater regulation, fuel costs and the fact that, increasingly, long-haul trucking is competing with rail.”

In all probability, those tough times will prompt an industry shakeout—consolidation will continue; many smaller operators will be squeezed out. Surviving that squeeze, says Motorola’s Lieberthal, may well depend on investments in technology: “If you don’t invest when times are bad, just wait and see what happens when times are good. In good times, the companies that are technologically adept will eat your lunch.”  wt

Sidebar: Handheld versus Onboard Computers

The trucking industry is embracing wireless technology, but for many, a square one question remains: should they base their system on handheld devices, or on onboard computers?

In its industry survey, eyefortransport reports a slight recent shift to the latter: figures for 2007 show 26 percent of those reporting used onboard systems, up from 14 percent the previous year. The survey’s view is that the lower cost of handheld options is slowly being outweighed by growing requirements for on-board hours of service monitoring and restrictions on use of handhelds while driving.

Most on the technology side acknowledge that each approach offers advantages—and disadvantages.    

At ALK Technologies, Craig Fiander—whose company works with suppliers of both technologies—see the easy portability of handheld as a plus: “When you’re tracking hours-of-service, is it truck hours or driver hours? Being able to have the device passed on to multiple drivers is a tremendous value.” On the other hand, Fiander notes, with hard-mounted systems, “You don’t have to worry about the power; you don’t have to worry about network connectivity issues.” And there’s price: a handheld solution, he notes, “is typically going to be significantly lower than an on-board hard-mounted solution.”

David Lemperle, chief operating officer at DriverTech Fleet Management Systems, counters that the greater cost of on-board is worth it: “If you are carrier interested in engine and driver performance—and if you foresee needing to do driver logs or automated hours-of-service, you can’t go strictly with a handheld.”

Cal Rogers, a DriverTech regional sales manager, is not shy about boosting onboard systems. First, he says, real-time engine diagnostics mean a problem is reported as soon as it occurs. Second, the greater processing power of onboard solutions allows plug-in scanners, video training, high-end imaging and other applications. Third, DriverTech can provide “least cost data routing.”

The choice between handheld and onboard, suggests Motorola’s Ralph Lieberthal, depends on what kind of trucking a company is doing. A long-haul trucker is likely best served by an on-board system. However, consider a truck doing local food delivery: “You want a handheld so you can scan to be sure you’re delivering the right product to the right place, and record a signature.” Plus, he says, handheld makes it easy to accept returns. In general, Lieberthal says, “Handheld makes more sense if you’re making more stops.”