Trucking Industry Shifting to High Tech : Computers Help to Plot Routes, Track Goods and Speed Unloading
If ever there was an industry with a low-tech image, trucking is it: The popular picture of black-top cowboys punching big rigs down the nation’s highways doesn’t include video display terminals.
But many trucking companies are being driven to more and more computerization because of competitive pressures that have built since the industry was deregulated in 1980, said Kenneth M. Weinberg, vice president of Carrier Logistics, a computer consulting firm in Rye Brook, N.Y.
“I think the image (of trucking) will change,” Weinberg said. “There’s a lot more automation in the industry . . . because of the two pressures of productivity and customer service.”
Computerization of the financial side of the business is not new. Such things as payroll and billing have been handled by computers for years. What is new is applying computers to the operations of a trucking company, Weinberg said.
With computers, dispatchers can determine the best routes for their trucks, dockworkers can figure out the most efficient way to unload a truck and drivers can stay in closer contact with the home office.
Skyway Freight Systems of Santa Cruz discovered computers earlier than most trucking firms because it began life as an air freight company, a business that was deregulated in the late 1970s. Skyway bought its first computer in 1979 when heavily regulated trucking companies were not allowed to use computers in certain ways because it would be an unfair competitive advantage.
“I don’t think our business would have survived if we did not computerize when we did,” Robert Baker, Skyway’s chief operating officer, said at a recent seminar on the impact of computer technology on transportation companies. The workshop was part of a management conference in Los Angeles by the National Accounting & Finance Council of the American Trucking Assn.
Computerization allows Skyway to differentiate itself to its customers, who like the “sizzle” of automation, Baker said.
“It’s just plain fancy; people like it,” he said. “It’s high tech. It’s ‘Star Wars.’ ”
Skyway will have revenue of about $18 million this year and has been growing about 30% each year, Baker said. About half of the company’s revenue comes from its air freight forwarding business and half from its trucking operations.
Skyway uses computers to constantly track shipments and gives customers access to the company’s computer system so that they can track their own shipments instead of asking Skyway to do it, Baker said.
But Skyway’s specialty is a computerized delivery system it offers customers that is similar to the shipping system that has allowed Japanese manufacturers to keep tight control of shipping and inventory costs.
The system, called “just in time” shipping, allows companies to hold down shipping and inventory costs by ensuring that a shipment “arrives no later than it is needed in the production process and no sooner than it can be handled efficiently,” according to Skyway’s promotional literature.
Computers categorize supplies by when they are needed for production and dictate different methods of transportation depending on how soon the supplies will be used, Baker said. For instance, a high-tech company that typically might have hundreds of inbound shipments would save money on shipping and inventory if supplies were carefully scheduled to arrive exactly when needed--”just in time” for production--instead of being stockpiled until use.
Among other things, Skyway’s system can tap into the National Weather Bureau and the Federal Aviation Agency’s weather service to determine if bad weather might slow commercial airline service or close highways.
Computers can be used at all levels of a trucking company’s operations, and consultants are springing up to show companies how to do it.
One is Carrier Logistics, which has developed various software packages, including one that augments the stereotypical harried, cigar-smoking dispatcher “who knows the city like the back of his hand” with a computerized routing system that consistently finds the most effective route for a truck to take, said Thomas P. Boyer, Carrier Logistics vice president.
Information on Unloading
Another Carrier Logistics software package helps a company determine which loading dock door to unload a truck at so that goods from the truck can most efficiently be separated and transferred to nearby trucks.
“This is not brain surgery,” Boyer said. “It’s very simple, straightforward stuff and very high dollars” in terms of money saved.
But Boyer warned that computers are not a panacea for a company’s problems.
“I’ve seen some successful companies that aren’t very computerized in the last few years, and I’ve lost some friends in this industry that were highly computerized,” he said.
The most experimental and still relatively expensive form of automation is on-board computers, where drivers can send delivery information to the home office via a computer in the cab and dispatchers can more easily communicate with the drivers, who are often out of the truck. The computers, which generally are linked to the home office by radio signals, also can monitor such things as a truck’s speed and fuel efficiency.
Boyer said it was first feared that drivers would resist the computerized companions, but most have welcomed them.
“Given all of the concern going in, we’ve been very pleasantly surprised by the adaptability of the work force to the equipment,” Boyer said.
“I think we’ve underestimated the work force,” he said. “The driver is a $30,000 to $35,000 a year guy. He might have a personal computer at home.”
