Execs: Analytics, Big Data to Become Standard Business Tools
SAN DIEGO — With millions of smart phones and apps in use today, the trucking industry is poised to share data more easily and lower operating costs considerably.
Executives speaking at American Trucking Associations’ Management Conference & Exhibition on Oct. 5 told attendees at the session “Next Generation Trucking: Tomorrow's Technology, Workers and Workplace” that analytics and big data will begin to be used more and more to predict behaviors, operations and safety.
“There’s so much more to wireless technology and how it helps your business,” said John Moscatelli, director of Industry Solutions for Transportation and Workforce Management at AT&T Inc.
“Wi-Fi allows information to get to drivers using smart phones and tablets,” Moscatelli added, noting that “social connectivity also gives them access to family” — cited among challenges to recruiting and retaining drivers.
Vehicles with cameras, whether in the cab or mounted outside, are growing in importance, too. The images reveal behaviors that will inform drivers and the back office regarding safety. Wi-Fi enables that data to transmit immediately.
Mark Gardner, CEO of Avatar Fleet, a division of Avatar Management Services Inc., said technology is the tool for workers to gather, process, communicate and take action quickly. But the time to learn and adapt to it is getting shorter.
“All of the tools we have today will be replaced,” he said. “That means you have to adapt. The future is today.”
Younger workers are more familiar with technology simply because they’ve grown up with it, he said. They are always out to do the gathering and processing faster using technology, and companies have to hire those with that knowledge and capability to stay ahead, Gardner said.
“You can’t know everything, and you need to back fill with those who do know more about technology,” he said.
Gardner spoke of an industry workforce that will have fully automated trucks dispatched by software, and then referenced the autonomous-driving Future Truck 2025 in concept now by Daimler Trucks.
The company showed off the vehicle during the IAA Commercial Vehicles show in Hanover, Germany, last month.
Gardner said public acceptance and federal legislation are the only things in the way of autonomous-driving trucks becoming a reality soon. But the industry will embrace them, he said, because for companies costs will shrink, including the cost of a workforce.
Another technology, push-to-talk, is thought to aid trucking’s productivity. It will allow drivers to speak with dispatchers and others at the press of a button while they are in transit, the executives said. Many cars are already outfitted with the technology.
Its use, Moscatelli said, is key because it is the only legal way the driver can talk on the road now.
“That’s all the government has left us with,” he said. “Others are driving while distracted.”
