Beyond Maps & Routes
New solutions get trucks where they need to be.
JOHN BENDEL
TECHNOLOGY EDITOR
Digital mapping, navigation, routing and optimization grew from the same basic PC technologies. Don Ratliff, CEO of Velant and executive director of the Logistics Institute at Georgia Tech, remembers when computers began to move beyond accounting and record-keeping into trucking operations.
"PC technology gave us the ability to draw pictures on a computer screen and one of the pictures you could draw was a map," he recalled. "A computer-based graphical map allowed a user to do the same things on a computer screen as on a map on a wall, but also calculate road distance, how much could go on each truck, etc."
More sophisticated applications related to mapping followed and they continue to evolve.
Here, three transportation IT professionals provide unique insights into these evolving technologies:
PREDICTING THE P&D FUTURE DAILY
Jeff Davis,
Managing Director of Operations Systems
Fedex Freight
"We're in the process of going through a pickup and delivery route optimization project where we will deploy routing and scheduling and mapping software," said Jeff Davis.
Fedex Freight, the newest division in the Fedex family, was formed this year from Fedex-owned LTLs American Freightways and Viking Freight.
"For Fedex Freight there is an extreme benefit if we can schedule our routes more efficiently than we do today," Davis explained.
"We strongly believe that the less time we have a route driver in the cab of the truck — what we call windshield time — and the more time in front of the customer, the more effective we'll be in supporting that customer."
Doesn't Fedex Freight have routing technology already?
"We have a ZIP-code-based routing system that basically defaults our shipments into logical geographic buckets. Then it's up to someone with some expert knowledge to route it finer. Then that plan goes out to the dock and we load based on that plan," he said.
But now, Fedex Freight wants its mapping and routing technology to reasonably predict delivery times. Among other challenges, that involves anticipating speeds on given roadways at given times of day and in given directions.
"If you're driving in the Bay Area or in New York or in Los Angeles or another congested area of the United States, you can travel in one direction at two miles per hour on a freeway at a certain time of the day. Yet going in the other direction you can travel at 55 or 65 mph. It's a huge difference," Davis said.
"The routing algorithm needs to be able to recognize that, it needs to be configurable on the road network level, and the routing software has to take account of that to route the driver on the correct path."
Fedex wants the ability to predict delivery times along a route based on a driver's actual departure time from a terminal.
"That's what we're working toward," said Davis.
Fedex is currently choosing primary and secondary vendors for the project and hopes to deploy a working system in about seven months, Davis said.
UNIQUE MAP AIDS SCHNEIDER DECISIONS
Dick Ritchie,
Director of Network Planning Schneider National
Mapping plays an unusual role at the Green Bay, Wis., headquarters of Schneider National, the nation's largest truckload carrier.
"Actually, we try not to be viewed purely as a one-type-of-truck trucking company. We market teams. We market our solo fleet. We have a Canadian fleet, a western regional fleet and an intermodal fleet. Those are our flagship fleets that make up the majority of our operations," said Dick Ritchie.
"For example, the Canadian fleet is maybe 600 guys who live in Canada and go back and forth between the United States and Canada. Then we've got the U.S. solo fleet and the U.S. teams with two guys in the cab. We've got a Western Regional fleet that stays in the western eleven," Ritchie explained.
But customers seldom specify which Schneider fleet they want to handle any given load.
"The majority of intermodal business is sold as intermodal, but there is freight that we can move either way," Ritchie said.
The network planning group decides which Schneider fleet should be assigned which loads, he said. Network planners do their work after a load is tendered and before it is assigned to a fleet and that fleet's dispatchers. The entire function — and sometimes the individual fleets themselves — are transparent to the customer. Ritchie refers to the Schneider fleets as "capacities."
How do network planners make these critical internal decisions?
"There are several different ways," said Ritchie.
"We've got a map, a grid that keeps track of each capacity type and how many trucks we have to fill in a given geography. The map breaks the country into about 100 regions and it tells us in each one of those regions how many more loads we need or if we have too many. It's a 60-second delay but essentially in real time," Ritchie said.
"Customer service reps input the loads and the map displays the sum of all the inputs. They'll input 10 loads from A to B and then the map changes. My group watches it and decides which capacity type to put (the loads) on, depending on how the freight is coming in for that given day. If too much is coming in one method, they've got to find an alternative method to move it. They'll move the freight between different capacities. The map is our first alert mechanism that we're getting out of balance," Ritchie explained.
Of course mapping isn't the only technology used by Schneider's network planners. Ritchie said his group also uses proprietary software to aid the decision process, but the map remains an important tool.
"The visual is more powerful than a list of drivers and a list of loads," said Ritchie.
Like so much technology at Schneider, the load-balance mapping software was developed in-house.
Operations Essential: Perpetual Updates
John Murphy,
VP marketing and product strategy NTE
According to John Murphy, the major challenge for mapping, navigation and routing technology is accurate, up-to-date data.
These days, Murphy is with NTE, the transportation software and exchange people, but he spent years on the front lines with truckload carriers and with the HUB Group.
"What fleets need most from mapping technology is good street-level routing and scheduling, and the only way that works is with accurate data around streets and physical locations," he said.
Fleets using navigation or routing software might find that I-95 is under construction, he said. Some software makers claim they can route you around this kind of problem.
"They can, but you need to understand the traffic patterns," Murphy said.
"You can program the software so it says I-95 from mile marker 56 to mile marker 62 is under construction, for example. So it will red-flag that and say, OK, you have to go around that. What it will do is put an 18-wheeler down Main Street."
It's a major challenge to software providers.
"Think about all the construction projects going on every spring. How do you keep up with this as the provider of the information? That's Point One. Point Two is how do you disseminate that? You almost need a direct link into your customer's system."
Nevertheless, said Murphy, some providers do a good job of keeping up.
"Some of them are good at certain parts of the application, others are good at other parts. Some people are very good at bringing the data in so you can present it — so that you can use it in what I would call a system environment. Others are very good at presenting it to customers," he said.
"There's a handful of people who are really good at it, though it might be a big handful," Murphy said. "There are probably ten vendors who have the market absolutely cornered on this stuff."
