FourKites Real-Time Temperature Tracking Helps Shippers Stay FSMA-Compliant

FourKite's solution allows shippers to track load temperatures in real time. Image via FourKites.

FourKites has launched a new real-time temperature and location tracking solution for shippers, allowing users to monitor shipment temperatures and ensure compliance across the supply chain.

The real-time temperature tracking is designed to help shippers comply with the Food Safety Modernization Act, which requires shippers and carriers take steps to ensure that temperature-sensitive foods remain within a safe temperature range during transit.

By monitoring the temperature in real time, shippers can reduce spoilage, operational costs, and one-time spot buys, according to FourKites. They can also improve customer service by identifying potentially non-compliant loads earlier in the shipping process.

FourKites' solution relays load temperatures with location data every 15 minutes from top telematics and trailer temperature tracking manufacturers. It features customizable notifications to alert users as soon as temperatures fall outside a specified range. Visualization and analysis tools allow shippers to review individual and aggregated load temperatures over time to spot trends and compare against industry benchmarks.

“As a partner to the largest food and beverage companies in the U.S., helping our customers achieve FSMA compliance is a natural evolution of our product,” said Mathew Elenjickal, founder and CEO of FourKites.

Related: Are You Ready for the New Food Safety Rules?

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Look for a vendor-partner, not just a vendor

When you are selecting an outside company to do business with, whether it's one for purchasing parts or turning over your service work, look beyond selecting a vendor. Instead look for what I call a vendor-partner.

The word vendor implies a transaction. And while the term vendor-partner is not a legal arrangement, it is a contractual one. In a relationship with a vendor-partner there are shared expectations. For example, a vendor-partner does not merely sell tires; it sells cost per mile.

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Choosing the right diagnostic tool

There are lots of options when it comes to diagnostic tools but selecting the wrong one(s) can be a costly mistake.

When evaluating a tool you need to consider the following factors:

Every tool has good and bad points so the one(s) you select should mesh with your needs as closely as possible.

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Better things to do with our money than ‘spend’ it on traffic delays

I've talked about how traffic congestion decreases the efficiency of the trucking industry before. But I want to do so again because the American Transportation Research Institute recently came out with the 2017 Update to its Cost of Congestion to the Trucking Industry report.

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Great Dane Relocates Atlanta Branch

Great Dane's new Atlanta facility. Photo: Great Dane

Great Dane's Atlanta, Georgia, branch has moved to a new, significantly larger location, with an expanded parts showroom and bigger stock yard.

The new Atlanta facility spans over 25,000 square feet and features a new and pre-owned trailer and truck body display lot, a large retail parts center, and an updated service center that is open seven days a week. It also features a large drop yard. The new facility is a designated Great Dane truck body center and the company's newest flatbed trailer distribution center.

The new Atlanta location is located close to several major highways and is situated near Great Dane's manufacturing plants in Statesboro, Georgia, and Huntsville, Tennessee. The new facility's address is 1637 Forest Parkway.

“Our new facility is designed to help us better serve our customers,” said Al Cox, Great Dane regional sales manager. “In addition to a safer, more convenient location, this facility is much larger so we can stock more trailers, truck bodies and parts to provide our customers with faster service.”

Related: Great Dane Reveals Smart Trailer Concept at TMC Meeting

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New York Times Paints Portrait of Truckers’ Lives on the Road

Screen shot of New York Times website

A few weeks ago, the New York Times ran a piece about the lives of truck drivers that didn't do much to help raise the profile of truck driving as a potential career, but it and a follow-up piece did paint a colorful portrait of the lives of truckers.

In “Alone on the Open Road: Truckers Feel Like ‘Throwaway People,” Times reporters visited a Petro truck stop in Effingham, Illinois, and interviewed truckers they found there.

“At a moment when President Trump has ignited a national discussion of blue-collar labor and even climbed into a truck during a White House event, trucking, which was once among the best-paying such jobs, has become low-wage, grinding, unhealthy work,” wrote reporter Trip Gabriel.

“We're just like cops. Everybody needs us, but nobody wants us,” said Greg Simmons, 54, Hastings, Florida, a driver for 27 years. He was also the source of the “throwaway people” line.

“You forget how to communicate with people,” said Ayisha Gomez, 39, Riverside County, California, a driver for three years. She's only doing this long enough to pay off her daughter's college loans.

“Any one of my grandkids do it, I'll kill 'em,” said Ron Carrabis, 70, Las Vegas, who's been driving 30 years for the same company.

Yet it wasn't all bad.

“Every day, you wake up somewhere different,” said Susan Zimmerman, 48, Danville, Virginia, who's been driving two years. “You have sunrises and sunsets. Yeah, it's the same sun, but it's different everywhere — the colors, the textures.”

Michael Gallant, 22, of Biddeford, Maine, who's been driving for eight months, told the times, “Truck driving is something I've always wanted to do since I was a little kid. I love it. There are some times when it's kind of a crappy job, but other times it's ...Read the rest of this story

Orbcomm Buys Fleet Management Software Provider Inthinc

Orbcomm has acquired the assets of Salt Lake City-based Inthinc, a fleet management and driver safety solutions provider.

Inthinc has been a long-time customer of Orbcomm's wireless data services and it provides fleet management solutions for more than 100 companies who operate large commercial vehicle fleets. Inthinc also offers solutions for the electronic logging device mandate. Orbcomm is acquiring the company as an entry point into the fleet management market

Most of Inthinc's customers are U.S.-based but it also serves countries in Argentina, Australia, Canada, Chile, Columbia, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Romania, South Africa, and Tanzania.

Inthinc's telematics solutions are aimed at improving driver safety, operational efficiency, regulatory compliance, and workforce optimization through the two-way integration of vehicle devices, mobile devices, apps, and data management services.

“Inthinc's offering complements and strengthens our existing transportation and heavy equipment product portfolio, allowing our customers to access a broader set of asset monitoring solutions,” said Marc Eisenberg, Orbcomm's chief executive officer. “By adding incremental vertical markets and telematics capabilities, the acquisition of Inthinc further solidifies Orbcomm's position as a leading full-service solution provider in the industrial Internet of Things.”

Related: Decker Uses Two-Way Refrigerated Monitoring from Orbcomm

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