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Big Rigs Go High Tech
pottercw writes "Trucking may not seem like a high-tech industry to the casual observer, but major carriers are starting to adopt an array of emerging technologies to combat rising fuel costs, tighter regulation and fierce competition. The technologies include systems that monitor and communicate vehicle conditions and performance, enhanced GPSs that keep tabs on tractors and trailers, and safety systems which issue warnings or even take action to help drivers avoid an accident — all working in real time. Computerworld has a cool mouseover diagram highlighting some of the gadgets we're beginning to see on high-tech trucks."
No... and it doesn't help the transportation industry one bit that transportation costs are approaching a threshold where locally produced goods can compete.
/me stands by for the screams about cartels and oil company profits.
For generations, moving goods around has been treated as nothing but a small marginal cost. This means we have been able to take for granted the origin of goods.
Of course the fact is, margins still allow us to take it for granted, and they still would, even with a doubling of the current prices of fuel. Fuel does not yet dominate the cost of transportation, and the cost of transportation does not yet dominate the the cost of agricultural commodities.
But, don't listen to me. Listen to the voices that really want you to be angry about fuel prices. Maybe there really is some conspiracy driving up the prices (while staying hidden within the competitive, transparent marketplace where the value is established, and where the prices can only be explained by investor behavior, since the only other factors of supply, demand, and reserves do not explain it.)
Oh, that's scarier than any boogeyman can possibly be: what if the market really does bear $136/bbl crude, without any nefarious or criminal interference in the market?
Well, it's the only commodity that has a scoreboard on every corner, and the only one where people honestly expect me to get upset about it, to make it a priority.
Tell you what: When fuel reaches 1% of my annual budget, I'll give it a line item. When fuel reaches a level that it is a significant marginal cost in delivering goods to retail marketplaces, I'll buy locally produced goods. Local economy will be happy.
If you have experience in commodities or degrees in economics, you might be able to persade me.
I've been called clueless for my opinions. I do happen to know a thing or two about the transportation business, particularly trucking, particularly in the ag sector.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Back in '91, IBM won a contract from J.B. Hunt to develop a satellite based system for trucks. It used a Qualcomm satellite system, a 486SX based tablet computer (I designed the keyboard controller, power management processor and did a lot of the BIOS work on it), and a docking station.
:)
The tablet ran a program designed by a sub-contractor that allowed the trucker to do things like checklists, fuel management, figure his trip earnings, report emergencies, etc.
One of J.B. Hunts driving (heh) reasons was that after a driver delivered his load, he might spend 30 minutes thumbing the same quarter into a payphone trying to call the dispatcher. With this system, he could send a communique that he was done, and the system would turn around with new orders in less than 2 minutes.
One of the other neat things was the Qualcomm dish could do triangulation that was accurate to a few hundred yards. At least twice I know of, rigs were stolen and recovered because of the satellite tracking.
Now the little antenna packages are ubiquitous on trucks. Look behind the air dam on the roof, or the back of the cab, and you'll see a white dome that's about 12" in diameter, and 10" tall. Odds are that's a Qualcomm satellite link.
The tablet system was pretty neat, too. It was an extremely dense PCB at the time, 16 layers. It supported the original Sundisk (before they became Sandisk) 2.5MB flash drives, touch screen, used Peltier devices to allow operation in extreme temperatures, had RS-232, RS-422, infrared, keyboard & mouse port, expansion connectors, LCD controller, all that stuff, in an aluminum frame with this heavy duty rubber covering over it.
The holster interfaced to the trucks wiring harness and could pick off speed (we were pre-GPS), RPM, voltage, stuff like that. Our group didn't handle the holster, so I only know vague details about it, but I do know that while they were considered some of the vehicle data busses for the future, they interfaced the old-fashioned way.
Most of the drivers were moderately receptive to the system, since it sped up their turn-around time, which meant more money. However, since it could tattle on exceeding maximum allowed drive time, over-revving, and of course speeding, there were some drivers that had real problems with it.
Incidentally, at that point in time, J.B. Hunt was a VERY large customer of IBM main frames. For the previous 7 years, they upgraded every year to IBMs newest mainframe offerings. Their big data center was somewhere in the Mid-west, I believe. With their route planning, logistics management, service records system, dispatch system and everything else, they burned a lot of CPU cycles.
Somewhere in my basement, I have one of the docking holsters and the tablet computer, and as of about a year ago, it powered up and booted into DOS.
J.B. Hunt and IBM learned an important lesson from this, too: Don't let the driver be able to see the tablet. Before they started positioning them where the driver couldn't read it while in motion, at least one accident occurred because of fixation.
While new technologies have brought more to the table, what the system offered 17 years ago isn't all that drastically different. Satellite is still the best choice, since cell phone coverage is not 100% pervasive.
The project name was Road Rider. Naturally, we called it Road Kill internally
Lane departure is being done all wrong. We need to get the various road authorities to start mixing something like this into the paint that they paint the lines with. Then vehicles could use RFID readers to no only know when they are departing a lane, but they could use this instead of GPS to identify where they are.
Disregarding everything else you said (I just don't feel like typing =] )...
When fuel reaches 1% of my annual budget, I'll give it a line item.
I just graduated from high school yesterday. I don't exactly make bank, but it's not minimum wage by a longshot. However, just in fuel to get to school, work, and home, i was spending up to 40% of my income. Even if I were just going to work, it would be nearly 30% of my income.
I think the price of fuel hits harder for those in the lower classes, but I'm not an expert so take it with a grain of salt.
Honesty may be the best policy, but by process of elimination, dishonesty is the second best policy.
I used to be a truck driver before I got into Unix Administration (long story but backing up is now a lot safer). When I left the profession in 1999 the truck stops were just putting rj11 jacks for dial up in the trucker section of the restaurants...Not exactly fast but computers had not hit the real of being personal communication yet....which truckers adopt pretty fast. In 1995 I used to feel like a big shot for walking around with a cell phone when I was among non-truckers but truck drivers already had them and owner-operators began to depend upon them immediatly.
...I had gauges that used dials and not a single LCD was present and I relied soley on mirror placement and use to avoid accidents.
But back then fuel was relatively cheap and the only modifications we had on our engines were a governor that restricted top speed (mine was annoyingly set at 68). Now I hardly recognise the cab of a modern truck
Oh, and laminated maps. That was the top technology for finding my way around Houston.
Trucks can only compete with rail for long haul freight services in the US because much of the nation's rail infrastructure was ripped up over the last hundred years. Now that the heady days of cheap gas and diesel are gone for good, America is faced with rebuilding this strategically critical infrastructure from scratch. So much for letting the Free Market prepare you for the future.
I worked for a large (LARGE) national trucking corporation for seven years in their IT department. Occasionally, I'd go to the terminals to talk with dispatchers / drivers to see how IT could make their jobs easier or faster. What I heard a lot about was how much they hated the invisible boss watching over their shoulder, monitoring every little detail of their workday and questioning them about anything that wasn't according to the way the corporation wanted it to be. "Why did you stop at the rest area off of 101 for 15 minutes at 12:33 PM on August 3?" "I needed to take a leak" "It shouldn't have taken you 15 minutes to take a leak" - and you can imagine where it goes from there.
Does all this monitoring and control increase efficiency and reduce costs? That's open to debate; while it may cut out some unscheduled downtime, it also cuts out some unscheduled overtime and / or supra-legal speeds. Net effect at the bottom line? Who knows, but it's mighty close to a wash. Where the real difference is - the drivers attitude about their job. They used to be "captain of their ship", piloting their load of valuable cargo to its destination - using the routes and methods that their years of experience had shown to be best. Now they're just cogs in the machine; follow the route you're given, operate the tractor according to corporate policy - and we're going to monitor you carefully to make sure you do - and punish you for every transgression. How can you take pride in your job under those conditions? Very dehumanizing and it just gets worse year after year. Each year the corporate overlords refine their expectations of what it takes to operate a truck at maximum efficiency.
Ultimately, what the corporation is thinking about is how much they pay those drivers - and how they could reduce that expense. Refining the task of "drive a truck" to the point where it's just a matter of following instructions is the first step. Once they've achieved that, there'll be no more need for those highly experienced drivers - someone with a new commercial license could do the same job at about one third the salary. This would cut those labor expenses and allow the corporation to post increased profits.
But how would you feel about no longer being able to assume that those big trucks are being driven by professional drivers. How would you feel to know that 80,000 pounds of freight in the lane next to you is being driven by a dropout that's talking on his cell phone?
This isn't idle speculation - this is the way things have been going for quite a few years now. All that's changed is the price of fuel; as that climbs, the transportation companies are faced with a hard choice - cut expenses to compensate or raise their rates. Raising the rates enough to cover the new improved cost of fuel would chase away a substantial number of customers so the pressure is on to cut labor expenses. After numerous reorganizations and cuts it's now the drivers turn on the hot seat. Next time you see one on the road, give him a smile and a wave. Those guys work long hours for not a lot of money and do all they can to keep everyone around them on the roads safe. Everything you buy - EVERYTHING - got to you in the back of a big rig. Think about the people who have dedicated their lives to making sure your store has an adequate supply of canned beer and what's being done to them in the name of "increased efficiency" and tip your hat; these guys deserve your gratitude.
The problem with trains is time to deliver. This is often much longer then when you do it by road. At least in Europe.
You have both the loading and unloading still to do.
Also trains are very interesting when you have a large load going from place A to place B. However many times you only have one or a few containers going from place A to place B. So you wll need to wait till others are going from A to B as well, because the traibn is not going to drive just for you.
As you still need road transport from office till A and from B till the other place, the time you loose in having to be there, waiting till the whole train is loaded, waiting till the train is unloaded, waiting some more for papers, is probable too great and the road is still cheaper.
I have seen times of a week, where via the raod is would be one day.
We always say time is money and a week is thus a lot of money.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I know we're way off topic but who is John Galt?
You're nothing; like me.
You need to learn to ballance. Why do people think that there will be one silver bullet that will fix everything.
They do use the rail system. Don't you see trains with rows and rows of Semi-trailers on the back? Then they take them and put them on trucks to go to their particular location.
How ever sometimes people need it there faster then the trains can handle (Being trains are only effecent in delivering bulk products) dilivering small amounts like one tractor full would be much cheaper and quicker and efficent by using a truck vs. Loading it on a train waiting for the train to load and have it roll 50 miles to the next stop to be unloaded, then hoping at that spot there will be something to replace the empty spots.
If you take any major highways chances are you will see a semi-truck with 2 trailers hooked up. then they break them off to smaller ones when they get into the city areas.
Trains and Freighters are only part of the equasion. Some companies even go smaller then the trucks after they empty the truck they load up vans or smaller trucks to deliver it to each location.
The Railroads never left. Commuter Rails are dieing not comerical.
As well we have a polital problem with rails is that noone wants them in their back yard or comunity if they are already there they sertonly dont want them expanded so there is more noise.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The full-load scenario is also a factor in trucking though.
A few years ago I moved from Calif. to Wisc. After my stuff was loaded onto the van (about a fourth of the space) the driver said "See you in a week." I wondered why. I was planning on driving the same distance in a couple days. When he said "...maybe more" I asked why. "I can't afford to make the trip without a full load". So as I was hitting the road he was holed up with his cell phone, waiting to hear from the moving company for another east-bound load.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.
Now I need to get back to work, I've been spending over 100% of my time on Slashdot.
Apparently, you don't know any truckers, have never been a trucker, or been in a truck.
The speed limit is fine. It is four-wheelers like you who get in the safety margin truckers leave that are the problem.
A good example happened in LA. A trucker was sited for following too close. He fought the ticket, and his defense was that it was impossible to not follow too close because any space he left in front of his truck was immediately filled by a car. He took the judge for a ride and showed him. The case was dismissed because within 5 minutes they were at a complete stop while the driver tried to comply with the law.
Oh, and about truckers and speeding, if you want to slow them down, change the law so they are not paid by the mile. The faster one drives, the more one makes.
I should I know. I drove a semi for Warner for a year.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
I live a few miles from the Ford and Chevy plants here in Cleveland. They both have multiple tracks going directly into each factory, pumping out fully loaded trains full of parts, probably driving off to other plants for assembly or further production. I would hazard a guess that they have no problem with scheduling the logistics, and I bet it is far cheaper and more efficient than trucking it out there.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
It was a money-making investment for them. It was also at least as fast as getting the supplies via truck. They used the same forklifts to move the supplies on and off the rail cars as they did for the trucks.
The problem with rail is that trucking is heavily subsidized by the interstate highway. Trucking companies get much more value from the highways than they pay in taxes and fees. So much more value that the railways, which have to maintain their own "roads", can only compete on the largest, bulkiest cargoes.
Rail transport was big in my country in the past - the big manufacturing companies had rail tracks inside their yards.
However, lacking this, railway transport means road transport to the train station, load transfer to boxcars, railway transport (which might take a while, as passenger trains have priority over cargo), then load transfer to trucks at the destination, and finally transport to destination.
As long as your transport can take a long way on the road, and you can send a train or at least several boxcars, using trains is a good idea. On long distances, trains might get faster than trucks (trains can go all day long, changing engineers, but truck drivers must sleep).