So Much for Freedom of the Open Road!

Truck drivers have always been an independent breed.

These are folks who prefer the freedom of time and distance in delivering freight on schedule.  Drivers are independent thinkers who are free to choose their lifestyle. Truck driving is an art mostly.

Between the distances demanded every day and the limits of how many hours a driver can drive, it becomes a stress factor for drivers to balance being legal vs being on time.

Over the years, technology has become available that helped track the efficiency within which goods were delivered by truck.  These included tracking driver hours, stops, GPS position, etc.

I recently had email from Steve Hensley, CEO of BlueSky Logistics on a new software package that tracks both driver and truckload behavior.  Steve was rightly highly pumped about the efficiency that this package creates for trucking operations.

I think this is great for performance measuring, but I wonder if the allure of the open road is now lost on the free spirits who used to choose this occupation?  I mean, lets face it...with this software a movie like Smoky and the Bandit could never have been made! 

Some of the stuff the new Bluesky technology tracks...

· Road segment by segment speeding.  With Google mapping.

· Unknown / unauthorized stops.

· Overages, Shortages and Damages.

· Later deliveries and late delivery notifications to a customer portal.

· Route tracking details.

· DOT violations.

· Over revs.

· Idle Time and excess idle time.

· Out of route mileage.

· Mile Per Gallon.

· On-time performance.

And all of this can be looked at by:

· Site

· Account

· Driver

· Driver Groups

· Vehicle

· Vehicle Groups

· Date ranges, including trending.

· And several other exception based parameter

Gone with the wind...

In the 1980's, when I lived in Charlotte NC, it used to be fairly common that inbound containers were delayed because of "flat tires" in Holly Hill SC.   Turned out that there was a "pleasure stop" located in Holly Hill.   This new software could do wonders to curb creative use of hardware.

Eric

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Comments

[Jameson Saint Romain]

Thats not good. When I was a dispatcher, I heard enough bashing about qualcomm from the drivers. This seems to be that on steriods. Glad I am not a dispatcher anymore.