iTECH: Six Years of Keeping IT Specialists Current

On Topic: By Bruce Harmon, Managing Editor, Transport Topics

This piece appears in the April/May 2007 issue of iTECH, published in the April 23 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.

Tom Strah, the energetic and creative editor of iTECH, Transport Topics’ information-technology supplement, is on medical leave. Since Tom is unavailable to write his usual lively column about the ever-changing universe of information technology and trucking, I took a look back at what iTECH has done in the six years since we launched it.

iTECH and its sister publication, Equipment and Maintenance Update, were conceived as a way to keep specialists up to date on those subjects in a way that goes beyond the weekly news mandate of Transport Topics.

We’re especially proud of what Tom and iTECH have accomplished. In its kick-off edition back in 2001, iTECH featured digital imaging, an exploration of how digitizing the documentation of shipping and delivery brought new efficiencies to trucking.

In fact, trucking and freight transportation has been one of the industries that has gained the most from the digital revolution. Software has made trucking much more efficient by sharply reducing carriers’ empty miles, turning them into revenue miles by making it easier to find backhauls, plotting the most efficient routes and directing drivers to the least expensive fuel. In this issue, Dan Bearth takes a look at the latest wrinkle in electronic load boards, describing how they are adding features that help carriers and shippers decide whether to take or tender a load.

Over the five-plus years of its history, iTECH has explored subjects ranging from route optimization software and trailer tracking to cellphone applications for trucking and, in this issue, how trucking company owners and managers can find their way through the maze of advice on the best way to find the information technology solutions that are best for their companies.

Trucking, as we all know, is a big, complicated and varied industry, taking in national less-than-truckload, parcel delivery and truckload giants, as well as logistics firms that don’t own a truck.

Along the way, we find companies bringing their expertise in specialties and niches: flatbed haulers, rigging specialists, fuel and chemical tankers, agriculture carriers that move perishable fruits and vegetables fast and reliably enough to keep them market-fresh or help farmers move their grain harvests to rail and river terminals, automobile haulers and movers of priceless art objects for world-class museums.

All of them have found that information technology and digital communication, once the province of the largest fleets, now offer compelling gains in economy and efficiency for even the smallest carriers, whose margins may stay on the positive side only when they can keep their trucks loaded and find the least-expensive fuel.

In a survey last year, iTECH found that about 40% of trucking fleet spent their IT money on mobile communications, from $1,000 for cellphones to $1 million for in-truck wireless systems that can transform the truck cab into a virtual extension of the carrier’s back office.

Other big categories of IT spending were tracking programs and maintenance software; and, of course, the industry-specific enterprise software that any modern business requires.

The latest generations of enterprise software from such pioneers as McLeod, Innovative Computing and TMW are featuring products that appeal to the new generation of trucking executives who have been brought up in the post-deregulation world.

Truckers have a wide range of software and communications programs to choose among, many of them offering overlapping services.

Soon, fleets will be faced with which electronic onboard recorder they should use to track driver hours.

To help trucking executives find their way through the sometimes confusing web of offerings, this issue of iTECH examines the world of information technology consultants, shedding light on the sometimes perplexing problem of where to get the best advice on what products to buy.