IT Becomes a Truck Leasing Option
Initially, some fleets outfit a few trucks rather than an entire fleet.
John Bendel
Technology Editor
Trucking technology gets easier to access and more affordable all the time. The latest to benefit are small, mostly private fleet customers of Penske Truck Leasing, the nation's largest truck leasing company. This year, Penske began leasing trucks with a menu of information technology choices.
At the customer's option, Penske can now provide a touch-screen driver messaging device, a dome that includes global positioning and mobile communications antennas plus a software package to make it all useful. The software is hosted by Minneapolis-based technology provider XATA Corp. Penske fleet customers access their truck information over an extranet (more about that later). The only software they need is a web browser. Penske calls its program Precision Plus.
According to Penske marketing VP Tom Feenstra, the company studied the market very carefully before deciding on its IT offerings.
"We talked with our customers in individual meetings and through fleet forums. We wanted to know what they were looking for. Certainly they wanted productivity gains. They want to know where their trucks are - even more so today with security issues. They want to understand the performance of their drivers and their vehicles and they want improved customer service," Feenstra said.
"They also wanted, if possible, one-stop shopping instead of having different vendors. They wanted to incorporate all those things into one bill versus having to cost-justify every component."
One reason many companies lease vehicles is the pay-as-you-go nature of leasing. They do not have to make a large, up-front investment. Penske's Precision Plus offers the same advantage, which Feenstra says is popular with small private fleets - even two-truck and one-truck operations.
Precision Plus is available to Penske lease customers at three levels.
The first, or Basic Package, records vehicle starts and stops, tracks miles per gallon of fuel consumed, records odometer readings and provides vehicle location updates.
The next level, or Standard Package, includes those elements, plus driver messaging capability, idle time recording, black box accident recording, automatic fuel tax reporting and vehicle diagnostics.
To all of those functions, the third or Premier Package, adds automated driver logs and management tools for tracking driver performance.
All of this information is available to fleet customers on Penske's extranet, called My Fleet. An extranet is sometimes defined as an extension of a private corporate network for use by specified customers and sometimes as a secure way to use Internet protocol over public communications systems. In fact, it essentially is the Internet, but with heightened levels of security and encryption. Fleet customers won't see a difference between My Fleet and most web sites.
Each Precision Plus fleet has its own secure place on the remote server. All communications from the truck and to the driver are routed over the extranet. Similarly, driver logs, fuel tax and management reports are created on the remote server and provided over the extranet, so customers don't need any extra software installed on their computers. Web browsing software will do the job.
Perhaps even more attractive to some corporate customers: All the Precision Plus services, including communications charges, are included in the leasing bill.
"That's one of the reasons we did this," said Feenstra. "We could provide it under our umbrella so they have one salesman, one support mechanism and one place they can go for all of their fleet information."
Feenstra said adoption of Precision Plus has been good
"It's across the board in terms of size of fleets. We have two-truck customers using it," he said.
Initially, some fleets outfit a few trucks rather than an entire fleet. Feenstra expects these fleets will add Precision Plus to more units over time. This had been expected. But there have been some surprises.
"About 25% of the customers who have purchased (Precision Plus) actually have trucks and not tractors. They're putting this on straight trucks. We were happy to see trucks using this capability as well," he said.
Penske was also happy with the levels of service being selected.
"What we felt would happen - because it is new to the marketplace - is the majority of customers would purchase the basic program, get used to it, then maybe upgrade to the other two programs.
"What has happened is completely in reverse. The majority of the product - I'm going to say 50% of purchases - are the Premier Package. I think a lot of it has to do with the driver logs and the hours of service. You can see they really do understand the value of the product."
(According to XATA, the company's automated driver logs can quickly and easily be re-set to comply with pre-January requirements should pending legal action make that necessary.)
THE ROOTS OF PRECISION PLUS
In almost everything but name, Penske's Precision Plus is the product XATA markets as XATANET, which in turn borrows much functionality from XATA's OpCenter used by many of XATA's 500 private fleet customers with a combined total of about 35,000 trucks. Among XATA's customers are large private fleets including those of The Kroger Co., Safeway Inc., Giant Food and the U.S. Postal Service.
OpCenter is a more traditional private fleet product including onboard computer, GPS, mobile communications and fleet management software. The difference is that the OpCenter software runs on the fleet's computer or network. The dispatch and reporting programs are hosted, maintained and controlled by the customer.
According to XATA VP Tom Flies, OpCenter can be configured in a number of ways and with a selection of communication options. The most basic is what he called a driver key, a small solid state device that the driver inserts at the start of a trip and removes at the end with the day's data recorded. It is much like the popular memory sticks used to extract data from digital cameras.
The second option is Wi-Fi, a generic, low-cost, short-range wireless connection that can be set up at a terminal gate fuel island. The third option is a cellular-based data connection over Cingular Wireless. Finally, customers can chose communication over the Orbcomm satellite network, which offers near universal coverage.
XATA started up in 1985, which makes it an old-timer in the digital fleet management business. The company, based in the suburbs of Minneapolis, Minn., is one of few trucking IT providers whose stock is publicly traded and whose financial results are public.
Like many IT companies, XATA went through difficult times in the recent recession. But in 2002, it acquired fresh investment and a new president/CEO. That same year, the company introduced XATANET.
For private fleets that don't lease from Penske, XATANET provides the same options as the Precision Plus, though rather than Basic, Standard and Premier, XATA calls service levels Bronze, Gold and Platinum.
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