Trailer Tracking:The View From The Fleets
John Bendel
Technology Editor
The long-promised trailer tracking revolution is well under way. But progress varies among fleets. Ironically, some of the largest fleets — many of which have tested trailer tracking products for years — are far behind smaller fleets when it comes to overall implementation. Beyond that, one fleet will use trailer tracking in a different way than the next.
HDT spoke with three fleets to assess their progress in selecting, implementing and actually using trailer tracking technology. All are commercial carriers, but there the similarities end. Each runs a very different operation and each has chosen a different trailer tracking vendor.
THE ROSEDALE GROUP
Mississauga, Ont., Canada
Vendor: Terion Inc.
Terion Inc. is a relative old-timer in the trailer tracking business. Its Fleetview product was introduced late in 1999 and is installed in major fleets, including J.B. Hunt and Knight Transportation as well as on many Xtra Lease trailers.
The Rosedale Group of Mississauga, Ont., Canada, offers both truckload and LTL services throughout Canada and the U.S. from nine terminals — eight in Canada and one in Dalton, Ga. The company carries general freight, but has major customers in the carpeting and floor covering industry. Rosedale has been a Terion customer from early on.
According to operations supervisor Ben Cavoto, 450 of 500 Rosedale dry van trailers are Terion equipped. The balance will be outfitted when older trailers are replaced.
What made Rosedale an early trailer tracking adopter?
"We drop trailers in the U.S. and Canada. Trailer tracking helps us control the fleet," Cavoto said.
Rosedale can better determine detention or alert customers that a trailer in their yard needs to be unloaded, he explained.
More important to Rosedale, however, is the security that trailer tracking provides. Recently, he said, Terion helped recover a stolen trailer. The thieves had gone to the trouble of painting over the Rosedale logo, never realizing the unit was being tracked.
But it's more likely that a roaming trailer has been taken by accident.
"If it's a white van with a small Rosedale logo, someone can hook up by mistake," Cavoto said.
Rosedale occasionally leases Terion-equipped trailers from Xtra Lease.
"One of the trailers we recovered was an Xtra Lease in North Carolina and that was an 'oops,'" he said.
Cavoto said that Rosedale sets its Terion units to report their positions once a day. Where valuable loads are concerned, the reporting intervals can easily be increased. In the case of a missing trailer, he said, you can poll the Terion unit and have it report back at short intervals. That provides not only the trailer's location, but also its heading and speed.
According to Cavoto, the system is simple to access and use. You can zoom in on maps for more detailed information and you can also take the long view that shows all units. "It's a lot of dots," Cavoto said.
Rosedale does not use door or load status sensors.
"It's about what you want the system to do for you," Cavoto said.
LANDSTAR CARRIER GROUP
Jacksonville, Fla.
Vendor: SkyBitz Inc.
SkyBitz entered the trailer tracking competition in 2002 with a product that communicates over a high-orbit satellite and uses a set of eight standard AA batteries. SkyBitz recommends lithium versions, which are lighter, withstand weather extremes yet still cost relatively little.
SkyBitz's largest fleet customer so far is the Landstar Carrier Group based in Jacksonville, Fla. Landstar signed a contract to purchase trailer tracking devices from SkyBitz in January of 2003. Landstar's Carrier Group companies include Landstar Gemini, Landstar Inway, Landstar Ligon, and Landstar Ranger.
According to Landstar's Jay Folladori, VP of trailer management, SkyBitz met the nine requirements the company had outlined for its trailer tracking system of choice.
Folladori said Landstar wanted a system that would (1) provide trailer location on schedule and on demand; (2) cover the U.S., Canada and Mexico; (3) provide reliable data transmission from the service provider and (4) offer at least a three-year life cycle for the product.
"Every three or four years, something new will be out there," Folladori said.
Nevertheless, Landstar required (5) that the technology be viable for seven years. The company also wanted the system to be (6) durable in harsh environments, (7) easily installed and (8) independent of a power-unit's electrical system. Actually, power unit independence makes short work of SkyBitz installation, which Folladori described as "lick and stick."
The company's final parameter was (9) that the tracking unit lend itself to covert installation so potential thieves would not know a particular trailer was equipped.
"We run about 10,000 assets, about 8,700 of those 53-foot vans," Folladori said. "We also have platforms, stepdecks and flatbeds and a large group of heavy and specialized trailers."
Folladori said Landstar expected to have 4,800 units equipped at the end of 2003 — most but not all of them dry vans. "We've also installed some on step decks," he added.
According to Folladori, the choice of SkyBitz was a long time coming. Landstar began seriously considering trailer tracking options as long as five years ago.
"We wanted to increase utilization, get timely information for status. We wanted to reduce lost and stolen trailers as well as improve detention management and PM cycles," he said.
"We've been able to develop a big advantage in trailer flow information. That location information, the history of trailers in the database, is becoming much more quantifiable. It helps us understand how an asset is being used. It helps us know if a trailer should be moved to a better location."
The company is also using trailer tracking for customer service information, Folladori said.
SCHNEIDER NATIONAL INC.
Green Bay, Wis.
Vendor: Qualcomm Inc.
Schneider National, the largest truckload fleet in the U.S., has committed to a yet unnamed, still-evolving trailer tracking system from Qualcomm. In fact, the famous orange-colored fleet is helping the San Diego-based mobile communications pioneer perfect the new product for commercial use in trucking.
The truckload giant, based in Green Bay, Wis., is the founding member of Qualcomm's trailer tracking consortium, a group of companies helping to fine-tune the new Qualcomm trailer tracking system that will eventually be commercially available to all fleets.
Scheider is starting with fewer than 25 test units, but expects that the system will be fully tested and ready for commercial sales sometime this year.
According to Paul Mueller, Schneider's VP of technology services, Qualcomm was a logical vendor choice.
"Qualcomm has the lion's share of the in-cab communications sector. They have a depth of engineering skills and operating processes. They have fully redundant service hubs in San Diego and Las Vegas and they know the trucking industry," he said.
Schneider should know. It was Schneider that gave Qualcomm its first large order for satellite communications systems in the late 1980s. Schneider expected to be an early adopter of trailer tracking too, but it didn't turn out that way.
"We've had a couple of false starts," Mueller said.
The first was with a company called Vantage, then a division of Orbcomm, the low-earth-orbit satellite company. Vantage trailer tracking was launched in late 1998 but foundered when Orbcomm fell into bankruptcy in 2000. (Orbcomm is back in business with new owners.)
The second disappointment involved Qualcomm, which pulled the plug on its own TrailerTRACS product in September of 2001, blaming an FCC decision that could lead to analog cellular service gaps in urban areas in coming years.
Like TrailerTRACS, Qualcomm's new trailer tracking system is ground-based. Unlike TrailerTRACS, it does not rely on analog cellular at all times. The new system works over newer digital networks, but can switch seamlessly to analog where digital is not available, providing the broadest possible cellular coverage.
Will Schneider — which uses Qualcomm's satellite based OmniTRACS for in-cab communications — be happy with cellular-base trailer tracking?
"We are satisfied with terrestrial-based technology. We have tested hundreds of thousands of points where we have spotted trailers. We have an extremely good percentage of coverage," said Mueller.
According to Mueller, Schneider is taking a broad view of trailer tracking. For example, the company wants rechargeable batteries to extend overall battery life, not just a battery that will retain power while the trailer is unhooked. Mueller said untethered battery function of 30 to 60 days would be satisfactory, "but it is important that we have a long battery life."
The company intends to install sensor units along with basic trailer tracking so management will know not just where a trailer is but whether or not it is loaded, for example.
Mueller said Schneider expects the load sensor to detect an object measuring 4 feet by 4 feet by 4 feet. That will keep the sensors from reporting a trailer as loaded when it may have no more than an empty pallet or two on the floor. The company also expects to install sensors to report if a trailer is hooked to a power unit or not.
Schneider wants more than simply improved trailer utilization.
"We may choose to run more (trailers), we may chose to run fewer depending on business," Mueller said. "It's more about utilization and effectiveness."
The new Qualcomm system will feature exception reporting. Rather than simply reporting a trailer's location and status at given times, a unit will generate a message when the status changes. For example, Mueller said Schneider will be notified when trailer status changes from loaded to unloaded. The company will also know when a trailer is placed on a rail car and when it is taken off.
"We'll be able to use the technology to provide a much higher level of accuracy," he said — something that will help the company deal with the expected impact of new hours of service rules.
"But that doesn't happen just with the device on the trailer. The other legs of the chair are systems and business process," Mueller said.
If it all works as expected, Schneider will install Qualcomm's trailer tracking across its fleet.
"All told we have about 45,000 trailers. Our target is to implement the majority of our dry van fleet. Some will be excluded because of their age. But we intend to blanket the fleet," Mueller said.
Correction
December's IT Solution reported that Flying J was installing Truckstop.net Wi-Fi hotspots at its locations.
In fact, Flying J said it is installing its own Wi-Fi network. Truckstop.net has contracted with Flying J competitors, including Pilot Travel Centers.
