May 22, 2008 (Computerworld) "Harry Potter must not escape."
Those were the words that J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc. received from Scholastic Corp., the U.S. publisher of the Harry Potter books, as it prepared to ship tractor-trailer loads of the final book in the wildly popular series to distributors' warehouses nationwide last summer.
The publisher was determined not to release any copies of the book before the official on-sale date. One reason why Scholastic chose J.B. Hunt over other trucking services was the carrier's ability to ensure that "we knew where the load was and that it couldn't be delivered early," says Kay Palmer, CIO and executive vice president.
J.B. Hunt had a three-hour window in which it was expected to distribute hundreds of trailer-loads of books to locations nationwide. The company staged the delivery by picking up the books from the printer early and storing them in secure, fenced holding areas positioned within 150 miles of every delivery location.
The operations center used GPS technology to gain visibility into these areas by monitoring the location of every trailer hourly. Operations could also "ping" each trailer, and, using data from infrared sensors inside each trailer, check that the contents were inside.
To ensure that the trailers remained securely on location, the trucking company used a technique called geofencing to create a virtual perimeter around each distribution point. If a trailer moved just one-tenth of a mile beyond that invisible perimeter line (set by specifying surrounding longitude and latitude coordinates around each address), the system alerted the dispatch center.
If a truck left too early, dispatch could contact the driver. The system also created alerts if a given trailer hadn't left by the end of the three-hour dispatch window. By using the technology, J.B. Hunt was able to meet the terms of its contract. No books were delivered early — or late.
That's just a simple example of how technology is beginning to transform the trucking business — and just in time. Faced with rising fuel costs, tighter regulation and fierce competition (there are more than 800,000 trucking companies in the U.S.), major carriers are beginning to adopt a constellation of emerging technologies that promise to improve efficiency and safety while helping them comply with federal safety and labor regulations.
The technologies include systems that monitor and communicate vehicle conditions and performance, enhanced GPSs that keep tabs on tractors and trailers, and safety systems that issue warnings or even take action to help drivers avoid an accident — all working in real time.
"Productivity solutions have arrived," says Palmer, adding that J.B. Hunt has invested in many of them. Most of the technologies coming out today have been evolving for five to 10 years. Not all of them are ready for the road, she says, but many are close enough that she expects the company to adopt them more broadly in the next few years.
In some cases, the technology has finally matured enough for production use; in others, the prices have finally dropped to the point where carriers can justify the extra cost. Here's a look at what's already here — and what's coming.
By knowing the exact location of every tractor and trailer in its fleet, as well as the availability of drivers, J.B. Hunt has improved route efficiency — an important consideration, with the price of diesel hovering above $4 per gallon.
"You're seeing a lot of telematics devices being added to the cabs so fleet owners can track vehicles and communicate two ways," says John Yurtin, data connectivity product manager at Delphi Corp., which makes mobile electronics and transportation systems. Telematics systems gather global positioning data from GPS devices and transmit it using mobile communications technologies to back-end computing systems that monitor vehicle activity.
J.B. Hunt uses decision-support software to analyze GPS and other vehicle and driver data, and then decides which tractor should be assigned to a given load. "Knowing the location of the driver and the hours the driver has [left to work] has a green benefit," says Drew Schimelpfenig, information systems consultant at the carrier. Reducing the number of miles the vehicle must travel to pick up the next load helps the company save fuel, he says.
J.B. Hunt's fleet management systems also use GPS data to provide the shortest route to a destination and plan routes to send tractors to filling stations with the lowest fuel prices. Dispatch can receive notifications when tractors and trailers depart and when they arrive, receive alerts when a vehicle strays off route, and track exactly when and where each tractor crosses state lines to automatically and more accurately report and calculate state fuel tax fees.
Palmer is still waiting for one important capability: the integration of live feeds on traffic and weather conditions, which will allow the fleet management system to automatically reroute vehicles in real time. Today that's done manually. "You can track weather and traffic, but there's nothing consolidating all the feeds," she says.
Even municipalities can't yet pull this type of information together for their local regions, never mind coordinating at a national scale. "The technology just isn't there," says Palmer. "It's a little further out just because of the amount of integration you'd have to do."
The average tractor has more than a half-dozen computers in it that monitor and control everything from engine conditions to traction control and antilock braking systems. Accumulated data is captured by electronic control modules, or ECMs. A central onboard computer mounted inside the cab gathers that data and sends alerts and updates back to headquarters by way of satellite or cellular links.
Carriers have monitored basic vehicle performance and diagnostics data provided by ECMs for years, but as new safety and control systems come online, the level of detail — and the quantity of information available — has been increasing. The basic metrics include such things as total miles driven, average fuel economy, idle time and engine diagnostic codes.
ECMs store data and communicate with the truck's other ECMs over a wired onboard network based on a relatively new standard known in the industry as SAE J1939. An increasing array of vehicle diagnostic and monitoring systems are placing data on the J1939 bus, where it can be picked up by the onboard computer and transmitted back to fleet management systems for real-time alerts or trend analysis.
"You have guys who previously were mechanics who now sit at a desk and look at exception reports on computer screens," says Donald Broughton, transportation industry analyst at Avondale Partners, an institutional research and investment banking firm.
In the past, carriers relied exclusively on services that would transmit that data over satellite links. Because bandwidth was expensive, however, the systems performed periodic batch uploads that included only summary data. But carriers are increasingly using less costly cellular networks, and they are transmitting more data back to the operations center, some of it in real time.
In addition to gathering diagnostic and operational data from the vehicle, onboard computers can also monitor unusual events such as hard braking, hard turns, or rapid acceleration or deceleration. The systems then issue alerts to the driver and often to the back office as well.
J.B. Hunt receives real-time alerts when a driver hits the brakes hard. "We have seen a significant reduction in hard-braking events when fleet managers are getting that information," says Palmer, but the driver needs to receive feedback about an incident when it happens, not a week or a month later. "It has to be real time," she says.
At multinational carrier Schneider National Inc., director of engineering Dennis Damman is testing a system that puts event data on a Web site where drivers can review it. "It drives insight," he says.
United Parcel Service Inc. uses event logging in its tractor fleet for accident analysis. The onboard event recorder watches revolutions per minute, engine speed, GPS location and other variables. Onboard computers may store activity data during the 60 seconds leading up to an accident and a short time thereafter. "You can see when they shifted, whether rpm's were in the proper range, whether the brake was applied," says Jack Levis, director of package process management.
With more vehicle data available than ever before, managers face the challenge of what to do with it. Schneider evaluates summary data only bimonthly. "We don't have time to look at all of the data that comes in [in real time], particularly when you're talking about 10,000 trucks," says Damman.
Analysts use software tools to scrutinize the summary data for critical cost and mechanical-failure trends. "We used to wait for the mechanics [to diagnose problems after the fact]. Now, with data-mining capabilities, you can react to a problem before it becomes a major issue and change it on the fly," says Damman.
Palmer agrees that the firehose of available data can be overwhelming. "Unless you have the processes and people [to use the data], it can be information overload to send all of the information from the ECM in real time. And it costs a lot," she says. J.B. Hunt doesn't transmit any diagnostic fault data. "If it's a critical fault, the engine protects itself, and we do regular enough maintenance that we're not looking for real-time alerts," she says.
But UPS can't get enough of it. The global package-delivery leader takes in all of the GPS, vehicle and event information the vehicle transmits, filters out what it doesn't need and analyzes the rest in an enormous IBM DB2 database. The operations research group at UPS includes mathematicians who go through this data to find what are known as "outliers" and correlations, using statistical packages and techniques such as clustering.
"We're just scratching the surface of what there is to find out in vehicles. We can predict a failure before it happens," says Levis. "One example had to do with an alternator. The precursor to the alternator going out was this change in voltage. [Operations research] found a failure and, by looking at many vehicles, asked, 'What was the outlier event that caused the failure?' " By monitoring alternator voltage levels, UPS was able to address the problem before vehicles failed in the field.
UPS runs its vehicles for 20 years. While the technology doesn't increase the number of years UPS can run its fleet, the company's use of analytics lets it operate the vehicles more efficiently and with fewer breakdowns, Levis says.
Most tractor-trailers use dumb terminals connected to a fixed onboard computer and have limited text communication with the back office, but fleets are starting to adopt stand-alone handheld computers that support Wi-Fi, cellular and a wider range of applications.
J.B. Hunt is adapting a handheld computing device from Intermec Technologies Corp. that uses GPS data and mapping software to provide spoken, real-time directions to the driver. The device can be placed in a cradle mounted on the dashboard while the driver is driving. Its ability to give verbal directions is important because the driver doesn't have to look at the display, says Palmer. "That's critical from a production and safety standpoint," she notes.
As with many consumer GPS devices, directions change dynamically based on the vehicle's location. If the driver takes a wrong turn, the system immediately adjusts and issues revised instructions.
While voice synthesis works for giving directions, voice control of the device is impractical. The level of ambient noise in the cab makes voice recognition difficult, says Palmer.
Another option is BLU, a Windows CE-based handheld offered by PeopleNet Communications, includes a touch-screen interface and a range of applications — including one that allows the driver to immediately scan documents and signatures and transmit them over a cellular link, rather than using a fax machine at the next truck stop.
J.B. Hunt's system captures both bar codes and proof-of-delivery signatures. Information is uploaded from the vehicle every 15 minutes via cellular or Wi-Fi connectivity. "We put it on the Web within minutes" so customers can then view it, says Palmer.
Federal regulations prevent drivers from working more than 14 hours and driving more than 11 hours per day. Drivers must then rest for 10 hours before resuming. "That tractor can only move 11 out of 24 hours, and that's best case," says Palmer, so maximizing productivity is vital.
Most large carriers still rely on having drivers fill out paper logbooks to document their hours of service, a system that makes it easy for drivers to fudge the amount of time they've spent behind the wheel. If drivers get caught breaking the rules, their carriers can be hit with substantial fines, and multiple violations can lead to a downgraded safety rating. When overtired drivers who break the rules are involved in accidents, carriers may suffer large liability judgments and lots of bad publicity.
Electronic onboard recorders (EOBR) automate the process of updating driver logs and help to verify that a driver isn't cheating, by matching the driver log entries with information on the vehicle's location and whether it was moving at a given time. "The next big wave will be onboard recording," says Avondale's Broughton.
PeopleNet offers an EOBR application for its BLU handheld, and J.B. Hunt is testing similar technology on 100 trucks. The J.B. Hunt system transmits driver log status and alerts to headquarters and also lets drivers know one hour before they need to stop for the day. Information from the EOBRs is then passed to the decision-support system when assigning vehicles and drivers to new loads, so that drivers with just a few hours left on the clock aren't sent out.
But many drivers object to using electronic logs. Because they're paid by the mile rather than by the hour, drivers have an incentive to drive more hours per day than is allowed. "If they can deliver a load in 12 hours and just drive straight through, you can do it a lot cheaper than if you have to pull it over two days," says Palmer, adding that J.B. Hunt takes steps to prevent that. Trucking businesses also have incentives not to use EOBRs (see "Technology and the tired trucker").
Even when drivers want to comply with the regulations, there's the risk that the driver will lose track of the exact hours worked in a given day. "If you're not keeping up with stuff in real time, you can put something in [the log] wrong. If you're off by 15 minutes, that's considered a falsified log, according to the DOT. That's one of the biggest nuisances," says Palmer. Many drivers like EOBRs because it makes tracking hours of service easier, she says.
Ultimately, the adoption of EOBRs may not come down to a cost/benefit analysis: The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is gradually moving toward making them mandatory for safety reasons.
The latest safety systems have evolved to the point where they can not only alert drivers, but also intervene in emergency situations. The payback from installing these systems is measured in reduced costs associated with accidents, including liability and lost revenues from out-of-service vehicles. Because tractor-trailers are so large, accidents often cause major property damage and loss of life. In 2006, large trucks were involved in 4,995 fatal accidents.
Most safety-monitoring systems warn the driver of an impending collision or rollover. But not all are designed to work with one another in an integrated way, and they don't all capture and support the transmission of safety event data to the dispatch center.
Of the active safety systems described here, vehicle stability, or anti-rollover, systems are the most mature and most widely adopted. The systems use two frame-mounted accelerometers to measure pitch (which can cause a rollover) and yaw (the propensity to slide, causing the rig to "jackknife") as a vehicle goes around a curve.
Such systems can alert the driver and mitigate an impending rollover by applying the vehicle braking systems and cutting fuel to the engine. Before taking action, the system takes into account factors such as how the driver is steering the vehicle, to gauge the driver's intent.
When activated, most systems make the event data available on the J1939 bus, where fleet management systems can pick it up and transmit an alert to the carrier's dispatch center in real time. J.B. Hunt has already adopted the technology. "We went right to the mitigation systems, and it did help reduce rollovers," Palmer says.
Schneider National has also adopted the systems. "The technology has come down to a price that made it realistic for us to put it in all of our trucks," Damman says, adding that the carrier has seen an improvement in fleet safety.
These systems use forward-mounted radar to detect vehicles or other objects in the road ahead and warn the driver of an impending collision. Adaptive cruise control uses radar to maintain a safe following distance behind vehicles. Some systems issue collision warnings, while others can take actions to slow down the vehicle to avoid a crash.
Schneider's Damman isn't sure the warnings are effective in the long run. Initially, a driver's performance improves when using such systems, but after about six months, he typically goes back to his bad habits. "He thinks he's better than the system," says Damman.
But Damman sees potential in collision mitigation systems. "We're testing them, and we like them," he says.
These systems, also called lateral drift warning systems, use a forward-facing, windshield-mounted camera that tracks the position of the vehicle in the lane by watching the painted lane markers on each side of the road; the system issues an alert when the vehicle starts to drift. It uses image processing to identify lane markers by detecting the contrast between the white painted line and the darker pavement.
Most systems issue a noise similar to what a driver would hear when crossing a grooved-pavement "rumble strip" on the highway. Speakers on either side of the cab alert the driver to which way the vehicle is drifting. The systems are smart enough to know not to alert the driver when a turn signal is on, and they don't issue warnings at lower speeds, when a vehicle may be turning, according to Iteris Inc., which markets the systems.
The technology has limitations. Because it relies on machine vision technology, it won't work in foggy conditions or on roads that don't have clear lane markings. So far, the systems alert only the driver, not the carrier.
The systems cost about $1,000 per vehicle. But on the highway, Iteris claims, trucks equipped with the technology can reduce rollover accident rates by 68%.
At Schneider, driver feedback so far has been "very positive" after tests of lane departure warning systems on interstate highways, says Damman. But on secondary roads, where there are no white lines on the sides of the road, the results have been "not so good." Nonetheless, Damman says, "the technology is getting better, and we continue to look at it."
These systems use side-mounted, short-range radar or ultrasonic waves to "see" vehicles in the driver's blind spot and produce an alert if the driver attempts to merge into an occupied lane.
Together, the three collision-avoidance systems — forward collision, lateral drift and lane departure — could help mitigate 60% of truck crashes, says James Sayer, program director in the human factors division of the University of Michigan's Transportation Research Institute. There's just one problem.
"None of these systems are talking to each other," says Palmer, noting that too many consoles and different types of alerts can confuse a driver, especially during a critical moment. "We want systems that integrate," she says. Palmer also wants the ability to receive real-time alerts when the systems are activated.
Sayer is program manager for the Integrated Vehicle-Based Safety Systems initiative, a government-funded research project that aims to address those integration issues. The goal is to integrate the three technologies to reduce false positives and provide a single, coordinated system whose warnings are easy for drivers to recognize. In the future, there might be seven different warning systems on the truck. "How do you convey the intent, the message, without confusing them?" Sayer asks.
Getting the systems to work together is also key. For example, the lane departure system could sense that the vehicle is rounding a sharp curve and convey that contextual information to the collision detection system so it knows that the object dead ahead is not actually in the vehicle's path.
Radar is limited to about 50 feet and can detect up to 32 objects, but it can't determine their size. Future systems will combine radar with lane departure warning system cameras and use image processing to better determine the size and location of objects in the road and what actions should be taken, says T.J. Thomas, product manager for driver assist systems at Bendix Commercial Vehicle Systems LLC. Series production in commercial vehicles is still "a few years away," according to Thomas.
Then there's the matter of cost. The systems will have to show a payback in accident cost avoidance before the industry will adopt them, says Jim Tipka, director of public affairs at the American Trucking Associations. Extra costs are weighted against the business's tolerance for risk.
Traditionally, many trucking companies have opted to accept the risk of accidents rather than spend money on high-tech safety systems, but the costs of major accidents, when they do happen, hits the bottom line hard. Avondale Partners' Broughton says most of the major carriers have had a quarter that "got blown up" because of an accident.
Tire pressure monitoring improves safety, but the bigger value lies in savings from improved fuel efficiency and extended tire life. The systems continuously monitor tire pressure; some automatically inflate tires as well. Properly inflated tires improve gas mileage, and at prices as high as $400 per tire, keeping rubber on the road is one of the biggest maintenance costs for carriers.
J.B. Hunt buys 170,000 tires annually and has 500,000 tires on the fleet at any given time. Last year, a survey of the fleet showed that about 22% of those tires were underinflated. It's hard to get drivers to check all 18 tires, especially in bad weather. "We have a really big interest in that," says Schimelpfenig.
The cost to add monitoring is about $1,200 per 18-wheel truck, says Chris Nau, a sales representative for Doran Manufacturing LLC, which makes tire pressure monitoring devices. He says savings from improved fuel mileage and longer tire life deliver a payback in about one year.
But Schneider's Damman says that for a carrier with a good tire-management program, the payback period for the technology is much longer. Schneider runs thousands of tires on 40,000 trailers and 10,000 tractors. That's 180,000 tires on the road at any given time. "We find that better than 96% of them are at the recommended pressure," he says. Spending $1,200 per tractor-trailer to benefit 4% of the fleet just doesn't add up.
"We haven't found any case yet where we can rationalize the cost based on our metrics," says Damman. But carriers that don't see their trailers often enough to be able to maintain the tires the way they would like to might find a monitoring system to be effective. "It's going to be a different equation for everyone," he says.
The systems do have drawbacks. The sensors are mounted to each tire or valve stem. Since many tires are changed on the road, making sure that the monitoring system stays with the tractor and that the new tire has the same sensor on it can be a problem.
The systems also add another information display to an already crowded cab and haven't been integrated to work with onboard computers or to provide data to fleet management systems.
Radio frequency identification technology is already used by some carriers to pay and track toll and fuel charges. Combined with electronic driver logs and smart handhelds, RFID technology could remove most, if not all, paperwork from the cab. It is also used today for container and trailer tracking within a yard or facility.
But in the future, the technology could also be used to facilitate state Department of Transportation vehicle inspections and to help businesses track vehicle conditions, says Palmer. "The idea is to have one technology that would be used by all," she adds. For inspectors, an RFID reader could quickly determine the date of the last inspection, the last repair and even the condition of the brake pads.
The issue is the number of sensors needed to cover all sensor points, ranging from steering and braking systems to weight and motion sensors. "For that to work, you have to have sensors all over the truck, and that's pretty darn costly," says Rich Craig, director of regulatory affairs at the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association.
"We love the idea," says Palmer, but despite falling costs for RFID technology, the return on investment isn't there quite yet.
In-cab video cameras can be configured to watch the road or the driver. Some are designed to record the driver's view of the road during the interval of time leading up to an accident. Others watch the driver's eyes and alert him when he's getting sleepy. But the systems can also be used to monitor the driver's behavior in the cab, raising privacy concerns.
"It does appear that drivers change their behavior if they have something like that in the truck," says Damman. But, he adds, "that is very Big Brother, so we've got to gauge whether that will be accepted."
The University of Michigan's Sayer doesn't think driver cams work. "We've never found that placing a camera in the cab affects outcome," he says.
But the biggest problem is that drivers don't like them. In an industry facing a shortage of drivers, this is one technology that's not likely to take off, says Palmer.
While in-vehicle technologies can produce a wealth of data and make fleets safer and more efficient, carriers are still learning how to best make use of them. "You have to have the technology, the processes and the behavior to apply it," says Gary Whicker, senior vice president of engineering services at J.B. Hunt.
While analytics can improve operational efficiency, safety systems also depend on driver acceptance. Once the technology is in place and management provides feedback to the driver, the question is whether the driver will change his behavior based on that feedback.
"Will they actually reduce hard-braking events or pay more attention to lane integrity?" Whicker asks. The technologies that make it onto the road will need to pass that test first.
Don't miss our high-tech truck image gallery.
