Cellphones And Software
A New Breed Of Wireless Phone
John Bendel
Technology Editor
Fleets can now have two-way radio service from coast to coast. With the push of a button on the side of a Nextel phone, you can talk directly to drivers in your fleet anywhere there is Nextel service. It's the same kind of instant communication used for decades by local and regional LTL and private fleets. The new service, called Nationwide Direct Connect, was launched in June with a coast-to-coast publicity blitz.
Nationwide Direct Connect is a sexy extension of wireless service no doubt, and it may be useful to some fleets. But nationwide walkie-talkie service is probably not as significant as other, less publicized wireless developments, which taken together are enabling the lowly cellphone to challenge traditional trucking technologies.
Wireless providers are optimizing their services, adding computer capability to the same phones that provide voice communications, text messaging, data transmissions and even GPS locating — functions traditionally performed by installed, on-board computers.
Cost differentials are dramatic. We're talking thousands of dollars for onboard computers compared to between $200 and $300 for a fully functional cellphone with all the necessary add-ons. That's the kind of number that can shake up a marketplace. And this technology juggernaut is just getting started.
Consider other developments at Nextel, the nation's fifth-largest wireless provider, which has targeted trucking as a major growth market. Two years ago, Nextel began offering store-and-forward functionality. Nextel phones that leave coverage areas "store" messages and reports, then "forward" them when they return to coverage. Messages and data may be delayed, but not lost. That made Nextel's ground-based system more competitive with satellite systems.
Then in August of 2002, Nextel announced it would market wireless phones with computer chips and memory capable of running applications written in the Java programming language. Two months later, the company added GPS receivers to some phones. In June of this year — just before the Nationwide Direct Connect rollout — Symbol Technologies and Motorola introduced an add-on device that effectively turns some Nextel phones into bar code scanners.
ADDING TECHNOLOGY, LOWERING COSTS
These are not new technologies. Major truckload carriers have been tracking trucks and messaging drivers for years. UPS and others have used onboard computing and wireless bar code scanning for almost as long. But those companies paid dearly to outfit a single truck with locating, communications and computing capability. They've paid again to put that technology in the driver's hand to take onto the loading dock. That kind of technology is now available in off-the-shelf wireless phones that can equip a small fleet for what it once cost to outfit a single truck.
"When pagers first appeared, they were this wildly advanced technology," said Marc Mitchell of Enterprise Information systems, Downers Grove, Ill., a Nextel application developer.
"But now you can go to a restaurant and they'll hand you a pager and say, here, hopefully you'll give this back. I'm sure they've factored in how many of those pagers aren't going to come back. It's almost a disposable technology at this point."
Cellphones, he said, are evolving along a similar path.
Complementing the drastically lower cost of hardware is a growing array of packaged software products. Among the Nextel vendors are familiar trucking technology names such as @Road, Aether Systems, AirIQ, Datatrac, Dynamic Mobile Data, Gearworks, Integrated Systems Research, Intermec, ServiceHub, Symbol Technologies and UPS Logistics Group. Even more software offerings will be available from smaller vendors like Enterprise Information Systems.
Meanwhile, fleets can find inexpensive generic systems and services. An example: For $11.99 per month per truck, fleets can sign up for GPS Time Track from Xora Inc., which tracks GPS-equipped Nextel phones and displays locations at a web site — on maps or in easy-to-configure reports. Dispatchers can quickly see, not only where the truck is, but where it has been and how fast it was traveling. It's detailed tracking at a very competitive price.
Another interesting possibility, especially for small fleets: If a driver uses ALK's CoPilot Truck, which provides both maps and spoken directions on a Pocket PC, that small computer can be connected to a wireless phone — from Nextel or T-Mobile, for example — to provide tracking information back to dispatch, home or anyplace else. CoPilot offers enormous benefits by itself. Tracking through a wireless phone is an added, low-cost benefit. And that wireless phone need not be equipped with a GPS receiver since one is included with CoPilot.
The new, smart cellphones can't do everything, of course. For example, there is no interface for engine computers, though that can't be far off. Long-awaited BlueTooth, short-range radio frequency technology, is now showing up in computer products and that will make it practical. On the logistics side, Nextel says it is working to eventually provide signature capture technology for its phones.
Clearly, these developments will make sophisticated technology affordable for smaller companies and ever-greater numbers of truckers. But smart phones may also appeal to big fleets looking to lower technology costs.
According to Mitchell, the major trucking software companies that interface with traditional satellite and onboard computer providers will ultimately have to interface with smart wireless phones. That idea has to make onboard computer providers at least a little nervous.
OPTIYIELD GETS A NEW NAME
Meanwhile on the software front, some of the earliest trucking software products to be described even named — in terms of optimization, now have a new identity under a new corporate logo. The products formerly marketed under the OptiYield banner by Logistics.com were acquired by Manhattan Associates Inc. last November.
The software helps truckload carriers plan, route and optimize at various corporate levels and had its genesis in a company called PTCG, launched by M.I.T. professor Yossi Sheffi in the 1980s. Sheffi sold PTCG to the Sabre Logistics Group in 1996, then bought it back three years later to repackage as Logistics.com — a coveted Web address during what we now recognize as the Internet Bubble.
The new owner has dropped the OptiYield title for a more generic name, Manhattan Associates' Transportation Management System.
According to Mike Croxton and Prashant Bhatia of Manhattan Associates, the optimization software has been and will continue to be provided and supported from the former Logistics.com location in Burlington, Mass.
Manhattan Associates is an established supply chain software provider and is listed on the Nasdaq exchange. Its newly renamed Transportation Management System brings the Atlanta-based company into the truckload technology market.
