Fleet Management News & Business Info | Commercial Carrier Journal
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/466315
66 COMMERCIAL CARRIER JOURNAL | FEBRUARY 2015 TECHNOLOGY: ELECTRONIC LOGGING DEVICES apps on smartphones and tablets. These products are compliant and can be upgraded to the new ELD standard without buying additional hardware. Enterprise-grade mobility. These products combine a robust telematics device with a durable mobile tablet display. Zonar offers its industrial-grade 2020 Android tablet display and an on- board computer to run applications for ELDs, vehicle inspection, navigation and driver workflow messaging. PeopleNet soon will offer its own rugged Android tablet. Companies that supply telematics devices that communicate with mobile apps include Omnitracs (XRS), uDrove, J.J. Keller, Rand McNally, Telogis and BigRoad. "One of the unique things about uDrove is that we do not require any driver interaction for the tracking part of our system," says Nick Reed, uDrove's general manager. "If a driver forgets his phone or tablet, it still tracks location and drive time." Maximizing payback Fleets that already have implemented ELDs voluntarily may say the technology is saving them time and money. The real- ity is that using ELDs is difficult to justify if they are the only mobile application a fleet is using. The best option for an ELD ultimately may depend on what set of applications offers the best return on investment in terms of productivity, fuel savings, safety and more. The decision may come down to the product that offers the easiest migra- tion path for drivers. Fleets that use the owner-operator business model are finding success with the "bring your own device" strategy and using comput- er-assisted logs or low-cost telematics. For fleets that primarily use company assets and drivers, an enterprise-grade mobile platform may be more appeal- ing to eliminate concerns about power supply, losing devices, data storage and other issues surrounding mobile devices. Vnomics offers electronic logging on a hard-mounted display, and a real-time fuel-coaching application offers a quick payback, says Mari McGowan, the com- pany's director of market development. When a driver exceeds 1,500 rpms, the in-cab display emits a beep that sounds similar to grinding gears, prompting the driver to shift and bring down his rpms. When drivers come to a stop, a "shift efficiency" score appears on the display along with a color-coded vertical bar chart that shows the percentage of time drivers shifted in the "good," "accept- able" and "poor" range. Enterprise-grade platforms that use hard-mount or mobile displays gener- ally are designed for fleets looking for more than compliance applications. "Transportation operations are way more complicated than electronic logs, and for vendors, it will continue to be about the value proposition that your product and company provides," says Eric Witty, Cadec Global's vice president of product management. "Many buyers will look for additional opportunities to reduce cost and improve efficiency and safety and will look to vendors to integrate features and technology that can provide this value." Bulletproof compliance To manage compliance, fleet managers may need more than logbook data. Some ELD products have compliance management tools that capture and report log violations – and more. J.J. Keller & Associates' E-Log applica- tion, tailored for fleets wanting a more comprehensive approach, is sold with an ELD device that connects to the vehicle's diagnostics port. This device commu- nicates with the Keller Mobile app that runs on the iPad, iPhone, Android or Keller's Compliance tablet. The app sends data to the company's cloud-based Encompass portal that fleets use to manage log data, including data that managers enter manually from drivers who still use paper logs, says Randy Thome, J.J. Keller's vice president of technology services. The portal has several different sub- scription levels or editions. Upgrading to the Compliance edition gives fleets a paperless system to manage driver hiring, qualification files, training and other safety and compliance processes. The Premium edition includes driver performance and operational informa- tion such as fuel use, speed, braking and GPS location. The additional compliance man- agement tools included in some ELD uDrove Prime is a small plug-and-play device with its own cellular modem that synchronizes with the uDrove Pro electronic logging app for Android and Apple devices. The core technology of Omnitracs' XRS is a small in-cab Relay device that communicates via Bluetooth with a wide range of compatible devices, including the driver's existing smart- phone or tablet.