f e a t u r e  s t o r y

HELLO OPERATOR

I’d like to place a person-to-engine call.

It’s one thing to call up the driver on the cellular phone. How about calling the engine to find out what it’s been doing?
That’s exactly what Don Doak, owner and general manager of Triple D Supply of Las Cruces, NM, is doing with his fleet. Late last August, Doak apparently became the first guy in the country to use the “real-time data extraction” capability built into Caterpillar’s latest electronic engine controls.
The feature allows managers back home to call up a truck’s engine and trip data, like road speed, recent idling habits and fuel economy numbers, and display them on their computer screens. In Triple D’s case it’s done via HighwayMaster communications gear, which uses cellular phone networks. Doak and his dispatchers can call up a truck any time they want, though in practice it’s done periodically and automatically.
Cat claims it’s the first to offer this feature without any additional hardware besides the engine’s electronic control module. Just plug into the ECM’s data port under the dashboard, then hook this wire to the on-board communications equipment. Computer software at home phones the truck and gets the data. (The feature will also work with Qualcomm’s OmniTRACS satellite communications system, but Cat says no OmniTRACS-using fleet has set it up as yet.)
Doak says the feature not only saves him money, but also helps drivers make some extra dough. Triple D runs 35 nicely outfitted, late-model Peterbilt 379s that pull aluminum and aluminum/steel Wilson and Ravens flatbeds. They haul building supplies, military hardware and dry produce throughout the United States. The Petes have big-power Cat 3406Es, which are capable of good fuel economy if drivers run 60 to 69 mph and keep their idling down. If they do, they can most likely average 5.75 mpg or better and qualify for quarterly fuel economy bonuses.
“We’ve had several cases where we’ve been able to talk to guys and help them with their driving so they could get their fuel economy up,” he says. A former driver himself, Doak realizes that drivers want to idle their engines to keep the cab warm or cool during rest periods. But he also knows through studying trip reports that extensive idling — say, at 44% of the time an engine’s been running — will cut average fuel economy by a half a mile per gallon.
“I’d like to keep it at 30% or lower, but that’s hard to do if you don’t see the reports until the guy comes in and you can manually extract the data” from the engine’s ECM. Now data is automatically grabbed from each truck every 2,000 miles. Once obtained, Cat’s Fleet Information software generates reports that can include graphs of idling percentages, road and engine speeds, mile-per-gallon averages, incidents of sudden deceleration and the like.
Gesturing at a report made from data taken on the fly from a tractor that was hundreds of miles away, Doak comments, “He’s been out 3,600 miles. We could get all this info if he came back. But he’s been out that long without downloading. And if he came back we might or might not get the data. Things get hectic, maybe the truck needs some repairs, it gets fixed and he’s gone again. ‘Did you get it downloaded?’ ‘Ah, shoot — we forgot!’”
Not anymore. And if it smacks of “Big Brother watching,” Doak says his drivers don’t seem to mind. “They’re interested in doing a good job,” he says. “We really haven’t had any problems over it.”