MiX Telematics Announces Free Add-On

MiX Telematics, a global provider of fleet and mobile asset management solutions, announced a new, free add-on to its MiX Fleet Manager solution: MiX Insight Agility.

The new solution creates a data cube that's accessible via Microsoft Excel and automatically updated with fresh fleet data. By enabling fleet managers to pull together multiple data sources in one place, MiX Insight Agility helps:

“MiX customers asked for more ways to analyze their fleet data, and we delivered,” said Skip Kinford, president and CEO at MiX Telematics Americas. “Feedback on MiX Insight Agility from our fleet customers around the world has been enormously positive, with customers reporting that it saves their teams hours of work each month.”

To learn more about MiX solutions, including MiX Fleet Manager and MiX Insight Agility, visit www.mixtelematics.com.

MiX Telematics Launches MiX Fleet Manager

Follow @HDTrucking on Twitter

Efficiency Starts With Spec’ing

I recently saw a press release about an online tool from Mack that allows fleets to play “what if” with a variety of components on a truck to see their impact on fuel efficiency.

I know other truck makers have something similar, but this particular tool was in the news recently. It got me thinking about the importance of spec'ing in the fuel efficiency equation.

read more

BC widening Hwy. 13 border lanes for $25.5M

Share Your Thoughts: Is motorcycle lane splitting dangerous?

Natural gas paper offers refuse fleet inspection list

TomTom delivers truck-specific navigation to North America

DALLAS. -TomTom, a global provider of navigation devices, has now created a GPS designed for professional truckers in North America. The TomTom TRUCKER 600 features accurate, vehicle-relevant navigation, map updates and traffic analysis— for the lifetime of the device—all in one package, as company representatives demonstrated at the Great American Trucking Show here.

read more

3 Trends in the Spot Freight Market

As FTR and Truckstop.com apply "big data" analysis to spot market pricing, Noel Perry, FTR transportation economist, offers some insights into the volatility of spot pricing and how spot prices correlate with contract pricing.

The data being analyzed starts in the first quarter of 2008, just before the big downturn. Since the bottom of that recession, contract prices have averaged a 1% quarter over quarter growth (annualized). Even with the big decline last year, spot prices have averaged 2%. This is consistent with the big move of random freight from the edges of contracts into the spot market, Perry notes. Volume has built, and so have rates.

"I expect this trend to peak in 2019 with the coming crisis in regulatory drag," Perry says. "After that is unclear."

2. Spot prices are way more volatile.

This is no surprise, Perry says. The spot market is defined as the home of swings in random demand. The capacity pressure indices calculated by Truckstop.com and DAT both swing widely in almost lockstep. It follows that price changes swing widely.

The standard deviation of spot rate changes since the bottom of the last recession is five times larger than that of contract rates. "In case you have forgotten your college stat definitions, that means spot rate growth varies five times more than contract rate growth," he says.

With spot prices, the lags between market events and price response are short, perhaps up to a quarter, Perry says. The response is not instantaneous because truckers and shippers take time to realize that a change is required. There are also some small delays in the statistics. As big data (and forecasting tools) emerge, this lag should be shortened because market decision makers will ...Read the rest of this story