Web-Based Software Is Appealing to Fleets
By Stephen Bennett, Special to Transport Topics
This story appears in the Jan. 7 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.
For some fleet managers and maintenance supervisors today, a routine part of their job is accessing a secure Web site to view, say, fuel expenses for last month or a report on which trucks need servicing in the coming week.
They can check that information, thanks to the convergence of the Internet, wireless communications and onboard computing — technologies that generate information and a need for software and hardware to manage it for fleets, said executives who work in information technology.
“From a technology trend point of view, everything today is Web-based,” said John Hines III, president of the Asset Solutions division of Maximus, Reston, Va., which provides management software to fleets. “We have not sold anything but Web-based software for the last few years.”
Web-based software is appealing to fleets because it can be accessed for use over the Internet, and it can run on vendors’ servers. Fleets thus avoid the installation and updating tasks that would be required if software were installed on their own computers.
In a typical case, data from a driver’s handheld device, or from a truck’s engine control module, can be transmitted over a wireless network to Web-based software, which then presents the information on a secure Web site for the fleet. This setup depends on reliable data transmission, and that’s where the advent of widespread wireless coverage comes in.
“We’ve been talking for years in the industry about ubiquitous wireless coverage,” said Bill Presler, senior business development manager of Panasonic Computer Solutions, Secaucus, N.J., which manufactures the Toughbook line of ruggedized laptops. Now it has become a reality, he said.
Cellular networks today also are high-speed — offering what Presler called “a fat pipe” and enabling nearly continuous transmission of large volumes of data from drivers and vehicles to fleets, and vice versa. Data from the field can include information about deliveries that drivers have completed, for example, or details on fuel consumption and vehicle speed from trucks’ engine-control modules.
With the combination of mobile communications and on-board diagnostics, “it’s almost like the vehicle is now announcing diagnostic-type information,” Hines said.
Plenty of truckers are asking for another software application — fuel management, Hines said. Fleets could justify investing in such a system when fuel was “at two bucks a gallon. Now we’re up to three bucks a gallon,” Hines said.
Fleets use automated fuel management systems to authorize and record fuel transactions. The Maximus system, for example, can work with a wireless device installed on a truck and a transponder attached to a fuel nozzle. When the nozzle is inserted into the truck for refueling, the transponder transmits the nozzle identification to the wireless device on the truck as part of the authorization process.
The wireless device on the truck also can interact with a wireless control device on fuel islands as an additional part of the authorizing and monitoring function.
The trend in software development is for “open architecture” systems, rather than closed or proprietary systems, and that is a turn for the better, said Presler. Proprietary systems are custom-designed and, for that reason, integration with software applications created by other developers can be “very costly, time-consuming and difficult” for both vendors and fleet users, he said.
In contrast, the specifications of open architecture systems are public, meaning any company can create add-on applications that can be more easily integrated.
