Trucks Morph Into High-Tech Networks On 18 Wheels

Penske Truck Leasing gives its drivers a GPS-enabled smart phone as part of its Cellcomm driver management system. The phone lets a driver request directions while transmitting vehicle location every 15 or 20 minutes with a time stamp. The system relies on a $100 cellular device instead of the $3,000 satellite terminals of earlier tracking and driver management systems.

International Truck and Engine wires its trucks and school buses with a multiplexed network that manages sensor information on moving parts from the engine and transmission to the number of times the tailgate is opened. The vehicles can be equipped with GPS-based telematics or wireless connectivity via Verizon's cellular network. And summaries of on-board information can be automatically transmitted to a Web site, where owners log in and view information even while their trucks are in motion.

"A truck is somebody's business," says Art Data, International's VP of IT. "We've built the equivalent of an IT infrastructure into the truck." International, an $11.6 billion-a-year company that's been building trucks for a century, and third parties are writing applications that run on that infrastructure. Vehicle operators can link to International's portal and integrate streams of vehicle data into their business systems.

International's Aware Vehicle Intelligence applications poll a truck every 15 minutes or so, making it possible to map the sequence of stops a vehicle makes--when, where, and for how long--helping keep drivers on track and deliveries on time. Vehicle time and location reports can be displayed on a map as "a bread crumb trail of where the truck has been," says Dan Lindberg, general manager of International's Aware apps.

Earlier this year, the transportation director of a school district in New York state used Aware to check on the whereabouts of his fleet's buses and discovered one was 45 miles outside the district in another city. When he called the dispatcher who wasn't using the tool, he was told the vehicle was in a nearby parking lot. Further investigation revealed that a substitute driver had taken the wrong bus on a field trip, Lindberg recalls.

Diagnostic history includes fault codes collected from a vehicle's sensors that may indicate trouble brewing somewhere on a truck. These messages are related to a vehicle-component database, which lets fleet managers and maintainers make a good guess as to whether the truck needs to be pulled from its route--a painful and costly decision.

"The thing that hurts business is unscheduled downtime," Lindberg says. International's diagnostics aren't able to monitor a vehicle so closely that they can predict at what point it will break down, but increasingly sophisticated monitoring apps may one day be able to do that.

International provides a map-based reporting application that lets managers define a set of boundaries, called Geofencing, that a driver is expected to stay within and others to be avoided. A propane truck driver, for example, mustn't try to go through a tunnel or into congested downtown neighborhoods. An alert is triggered at headquarters if the vehicle goes off course.

The cherry-picker arm of a utility truck, used to make repairs high in the air, can cause damage if a driver takes off without securing the arm after use. Today, a sensor on the arm can be linked to a warning light on the dashboard. Lindberg sees the day when such sensors become proactive: The truck won't start moving with an unsecured extension boom, or the boom can't extend unless the parking brake is on.

Because the truck is networked, many capabilities are optional and programmable. Says Lindberg, "We make the whole vehicle configurable."

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High Tech In Unexpected Places