Fleet Management News & Business Info | Commercial Carrier Journal
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/265903
74 COMMERCIAL CARRIER JOURNAL | MARCH 2014 TECHNOLOGY: ROUTE COMPLIANCE to gather information about the load – freight classification, dimensions, equipment type, etc. It then considers the ap- propriate route from ALK's PC Miler – shortest, most prac- tical, etc. – as well as any custom route settings that avoid or favor certain roads, as well as user-defined cost parameters for tolls, time and fuel. It uses all of this information to cre- ate an optimized lowest-cost route. Once the route line is designed by Fuel&Route or Ex- pertFuel, it can be sent to the in-cab computer as dispatch instructions, or directly into an onboard navigation ap- plication, to help keep drivers in line and on schedule. Both Manhattan's Fuel&Route and TMW's ExpertFuel applica- tions integrate with ALK's CoPilot Truck in-cab navigation system. Rand McNally offers integrated in-cab navigation on its TND 760 and 7600 mobile computing platforms. Custom routes can be pushed from the back office to its navigation software. Drivers can be monitored in real time as they progress against the planned route. GOING OUT OF ROUTE? NOT SO FAST U.S. Xpress has designed an application for driver manag- ers that unites all of its route management technology and real-time alerts into one screen. The company has been able to reduce out-of-route mileage costs by 1 to 2 percent by having real-time visibility and by feeding information to the driver immediately to get back on route. One of the components of U.S. Xpress' real-time route compliance tools is ALK's RouteSync functionality, which is available in the latest versions of CoPilot and PC Miler. RouteSync ties the two products together between the cab and office. With RouteSync, any custom settings to PC Miler truck routes to avoid cer- tain roads or areas are pushed to CoPi- lot through wireless communications. TMW's Expert- Fuel can be used in combination with its IDSC TripAlert product to provide fleet managers with visibility of what they asked the driver to do versus what the driver actually is doing. TripAlert uses RouteSync and CoPilot to manage the driver actively, says David McKinney, general manager and vice president of TMW Optimization. If drivers deviate from the route, CoPilot will enforce compliance by either directing the driver back to the original route or recalculating a new route, depending on the fleet's preference. The combination of the products – ExpertFuel to produce the back-office route, TripAlert to provide good visibility and exception-based alerting, and CoPilot to give instructions in the cab – creates a holistic approach to truck routing, McKinney says. "Having the back office understand all the needs of the business from a cost and routing perspective, and being able to deploy that instantly to the cab, I think, is a game-chang- er in terms of control over the route line," he says. ZEROING IN ON TOLLS The "Crossroads of America" has become a continuous stretch of toll roads that connect Chicago to major metro- politan areas in the Mid-Atlantic and New England states. Going east on Interstate 90, the Rand McNally offers integrated in-cab navigation on its TND 760 and 7600 mobile computing platforms. Route optimization systems integrate with transportation management systems and mileage, routing and in-cab navigation software, among other sources, to calculate routes instantly as conditions change.