Fleet Management News & Business Info | Commercial Carrier Journal
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/265903
COMMERCIAL CARRIER JOURNAL | MARCH 2014 73 S tatic" is the word John White uses to describe truck routing before the technology in the office and the cab was able to match the reality on the ground – where the rubber meets the road. White, chief marketing officer of Chattanooga, Tenn.- based U.S. Xpress (CCJ Top 250, No. 11), says that for years, he and other transportation professionals assumed that the mileages and routes from Rand McNally's IntelliRoute or ALK Technologies' PC Miler software packages were the best and most efficient way to route trucks. "That's not always the case," he says – at least not before the software began to incorporate more than distance in its route calculations. Common designations such as "short- est," "practical 53-foot trailer" and others used for truck route and mileage standards may not, by themselves, be the most cost-efficient option. The most efficient route between two points may change from week to week or even day to day to achieve minimum cost. "It is critically important to have true activity-based costing in a real-time environment," White says. "Dynamic" is how White describes today's truck rout- ing technology. U.S. Xpress – the nation's second-largest privately owned truckload carrier – and many other fleets now use routing technology that considers the costs of time, fuel, tolls and other variables. This evolution has made it possible to get trucks from point A to point B in the most efficient way possible. Finding the lowest-cost route is only half the battle; the rest is all about execution. Integrated routing, navigation and monitoring applications can help drivers adhere to prescribed routes. LOWEST-COST ROUTING Software systems can consider a multitude of factors when designing optimal routes for truck fleets. These so-called optimization systems integrate with transportation man- agement systems and mileage, routing and in-cab naviga- tion software, among other sources, to calculate routes instantly as conditions change. Manhattan Associates' Fuel&Route considers the total cost of dispatch in its route optimization design. The soft- ware begins with ALK's PC Miler truck-legal routes – prac- tical, toll discouraged, shortest, etc. – between any origin and destination pair. It then adds a fleet's variable and fixed costs on each route – fuel, tolls, miles, hours and driver pay – to determine the true lowest-cost route. "We account for all of that," says Mike Glasgow, Man- hattan's carrier account executive. Carriers that use Fuel&Route generally have more than 300 trucks, and the system is not offered through a cloud or subscription model, Glasgow says. TMW Systems' ExpertFuel interfaces with TMS systems Routing technology continues to evolve BY AARON HUFF Having the back office understand all the needs of the business, and being able to deploy that instantly to the cab, is a game-changer. – David McKinney, GM and VP, TMW Optimization MORE THAN DISTANCE