Commentary: Can Autonomous Trucks Help You Attract Fresh Talent?

Deborah Lockridge

Those of us in the trucking press tend to shake our heads and roll our eyes at the breathless coverage in the mainstream and tech media about “driverless trucks” and “Uber for trucking.” We know trucking is a lot more complicated than piloting a truck down the road and getting one-off loads.

But there's one good thing about all this coverage: It's helping to make trucking look “cool” to young people who may never have thought about transportation and logistics as a career.

Brett Mowers with River Valley Foods in New York was one of HDT's Emerging Leaders last year — a new award we started to highlight some of trucking's rising stars. He agrees that technology can help make transportation and logistics seem a little more glamorous. “The thought of some driverless trucks are a little scary, but it's also a little exciting to someone like me.”

And we need to capitalize on that, because from the truck cab to the shop to the corner office, our industry is graying. We need to bring in fresh talent and new ideas to ensure the continued success of our companies. But in addition to piquing their interest in our industry, we need programs to enhance their development, their knowledge of trucking and of the company they're working for.

A Gallup poll of 1,700 U.S. workers asked Baby Boomers, Millennials, and Gen Xers to rate which factors were “extremely important” in their jobs. For Millennials, the opportunity to learn and grow was rated highly far more than for Baby Boomers or for their younger GenX counterparts. Another area that scored high for all three groups was the quality of the manager or management above them. (Interestingly, factors such as “fun place to work” and “informal work environment” earned much lower scores from all ...Read the rest of this story

Smart Trucks Have Already Arrived

Trucks and cars alike are being designed with new sensing abilities and greater intelligence.

The trucks going down the road a decade from now will likely not look drastically different than they do today. And, despite all the hype over autonomous trucks, they probably will still have drivers. It's what's going on behind the dashboard and over the air that is truly exciting as we enter a new generation of smart and connected trucks.

Class 8 trucks being introduced today are preloaded with an impressive — and expandable — suite of electronics and wireless communication capabilities. Over the next decade, experts say, those capabilities will exponentially expand the efficiency, safety, productivity, and visibility of commercial trucks hauling freight — in ways that could fundamentally transform trucking and logistics in the 21st century.

The three technologies driving these changes are vehicle connectivity, artificial intelligence, and autonomous operating systems. Many of the systems that will enable these changes are already on trucks today. Over the next five to 10 years, experts say, these systems will become more powerful. They will be able to broadcast and receive data reliably in any location at any time, and they will begin to self-integrate and feed off of each other's capabilities. Trucks will begin the transformation into rolling computers that can monitor the health of their own disparate operating systems, as well as the cargo they're carrying, the personnel operating them, and the world around them.

The result will be a flow of real-time information that goes far beyond telematics capabilities today, spilling over into the entire logistics chain.

For all the changes coming our way, the outward physical appearance of the trucks themselves is not likely to change much. That's because the basic mission of these vehicles, the weight they can legally carry, and the legal dimensions ...Read the rest of this story

Love’s buys Speedco

Love's Travel Stops & Country Stores has hammered out a deal to purchase Speedco, a national network of service locations that provides quick lube and inspection services to truckers, from tire maker Bridgestone Americas – a transaction subject to the usual regulatory approvals and certain other closing conditions, Love's noted.

Financial data regarding the deal wasn't disclosed.

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Trimble acquires 10-4 Systems

Trimble announced it has acquired privately held 10-4 Systems, a provider of multimodal shipment visibility solutions and related technologies for shippers and transportation providers.

The acquisition expands Trimble's portfolio of Transportation Management Systems (TMS) to include an established cloud-based solution for small carriers as well as a shipper RFP platform. Financial terms were not disclosed.

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FleetUp Offers Ruggedized Tablet for Fleets

The FleetUp Orange is a ruggedized tablet designed for fleet drivers required to display records of duty status upon request instead of printing out hard copies.

FleetUp Orange operates on the Android platform and can run compatible HOS compliance apps allowing fleet managers to use existing solutions. The FleetUp HOS Companion app comes pre-loaded on FleetUp Orange, offering a wide array of tools, including: Voice Over HOS, CamVue, Truck Route Navigation, Document Scanner App, Trip History, and App blocker/Android finder.

FleetUp Orange includes a sunlight readable screen, case with a drop-test rating of MIL-STD 810G and dust/waterproof rating of IP67, dashboard or windshield mounting options, a 13-megapixel camera with flash LED, and a 64GB micro-SD memory card for storage.

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Economic Watch: New Figures Showing Storm Damage

Retail sales in the U.S. reversed course in August along with industrial production, both taking a hit due to due to recent storms, as price inflation reared its head, while consumers appeared to be ever resilient.

A Commerce Department report released Friday showed retail sales fell 0.2% last month from July, as motor vehicle sales tumbled 1.6%, the biggest decline since January.

Expectations were that August retail sales would improve 0.1%, according to a consensus estimate from Wall Street analysts.

The decline in auto sales comes as they were unchanged in July, however, they are expected to get a significant boost in the wake of hurricanes Harvey and Irma, which resulted in many vehicle being flooded out.

Also the 0.6% overall jump in retail sales in July was cut by the department to a 0.3% increase.

So-called “core sales” in August; which exclude automobiles, gasoline, building materials and food services; fell 0.2% following a 0.6% increase in July.

Despite the disappointing month-to-month performance total retail sales in August jumped 3.2% from the same time a year ago.

“In the first of many indicators this fall to be impacted by hurricanes, the August retail sales report showed the surge in gasoline sales was erased by the lost business from other categories in August,” said Eugenio J. Alemán, senior economist at Wells Fargo Securities. “In September, building supply stores will likely see much stronger sales as Houston and the entire state of Florida rebuild and recover from major back-to-back storms.”

Also on Friday, a measure of the total output from the nation's factories, mines and utilities was released, showing it declined 0.9% in August, following six straight monthly gains.

The decline in the Federal Reserve's Industrial Production Index came as Hurricane Harvey, which hit the Gulf Coast of Texas in late August, is ...Read the rest of this story

Continental updates VDO RoadLog Office

Continental announced it will provide VDO RoadLog users with free software updates for VDO RoadLog Office, Continental's online compliance reporting and fleet management tool.

VDO RoadLog Office is used in conjunction with VDO RoadLog ELDs to automate compliance reporting and provide advanced fleet management capabilities. In addition to free updates for the VDO RoadLog Office online compliance and reporting tool, free software updates will be provided for VDO RoadLog ELD and ELD Plus electronic logging devices.

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