Trimble Acquires ALK Technologies, Adding to Truck Software Holdings
This story appears in the Jan. 7 print edition of Transport Topics.
Trimble Navigation Ltd. last week said it has purchased navigation software provider ALK Technologies Inc., continuing its aggressive expansion in the trucking technology field.
The acquisition, announced on Jan. 3, follows last year’s purchase of TMW Systems Inc., the industry’s largest transportation management software provider, for about $334 million. During 2011, Trimble also acquired onboard computing provider PeopleNet Communications Corp.
With ALK, Trimble adds navigation, mileage and mapping facets to its transportation technology holdings, which include an in-cab communications provider in PeopleNet, and a back-office fleet software provider in TMW.
ALK’s product lines include its PC Miler truck-specific mileage software and CoPilot Live, which offers onboard navigation for drivers.
Trimble completed the ALK purchase on Dec. 31, said Ron Konezny, general manager of Trimble’s transportation and logistics division. Financial terms were not disclosed.
ALK will retain its leadership team based in Princeton, N.J., led by CEO Barry Glick.
Konezny said the ALK acquisition adds a particular strength to Trimble’s shipper focus.
“We’ve had a strong presence in the carrier market, and this will add to that as well, but it adds a particular complement from a shipper perspective,” he said.
ALK will become part of Trimble’s Mobile Solutions segment, along with PeopleNet and TMW, and will continue to operate as a separate brand under Trimble, Konezny said.
Konezny added that ALK will continue to work with partners outside of Trimble, such as Qualcomm and McLeod Software Inc.
TMW President David Wangler said it will remain “business as usual” for ALK’s customers. “While we’ll work very hard to integrate our products, we’ll also support our partners and really our customers,” he said.
Wangler said Trimble will continue to use the ALK brand. “We really believe that ALK has built a great deal of not just brand recognition but brand equity,” he said.
Wangler said Trimble has a strategic interest in supplying “end-to-end” technology. “Without the mileage, without the mapping, without the navigation — you kind of have a missing piece,” he said. “If you can combine the mapping, mileage and navigation, along with the execution from a mobile resource management perspective, you can truly offer that end-to-end solution.”
ALK has a long history of collaboration with both TMW and PeopleNet.
Wangler said TMW’s relationship with ALK goes back about 20 years. Konezny, who founded PeopleNet in 1994, said that company has worked with ALK for about 10 years.
ALK’s Glick said he “couldn’t imagine a better fit” for his company than Trimble, with “the back-end piece where we have the fit with TMW, and the in-cab piece where we have the fit with PeopleNet, and the vision of end-to-end on the mapping and routing and mileage side.”
“It’s going to bring opportunities to our customers, to our partners and our employees,” Glick said.
ALK, incorporated in 1981, has about 170 full-time employees. It has about 20,000 active customers in North America who have bought a version of PC Miler in the past five years, including for-hire and private carriers, shippers and third-party logistics providers.
The first version of PC Miler was released in 1986.
