Truckers Hit High-Tech Road

Back in the “Smokey and the Bandit” days of big-rig trucking, high tech was a CB radio.

Breaker, breaker, times have changed.

The big rig of the future comes equipped with an on-board computer, satellite navigation, a system that warns a drowsy driver if the truck wanders out of a lane, infrared night vision, e-mail, external video cameras, electronic air brake monitoring and a wireless global-positioning system that can tell the home company the exact location of a truck at any time.

Not every trucker likes this technological vision of the future, but Juan Santoyo of North Hollywood is delighted with much of it. “That’s beautiful,” he said, gazing at the satellite navigation/night vision screen on a prototype parked at a truck stop outside Seattle. “That can make me money.”

High tech is a cozy fit with the new world of trucking, where the costs of moving and storing goods are managed down to the minute and the penny. Under ideal conditions, a truckload reaches its destination just as its contents are needed. Companies work out schedules that allow truckers little slack. And getting lost--or taking side trips--also can hit a driver with expensive extra fuel costs.

“It’s just a fact of life in the trucking industry,” said Tom Bolke of Odessa, Texas, who is hauling Formica flooring on this day. He has been on the road 29 years. “You don’t even have to bother calling in to the company anymore. They can pinpoint you within a block.”

Bolke is more wary than enthusiastic. But he likes the notion of night vision, an approximately $5,000 option currently available in trucks. It can detect objects far ahead of headlights. “You hit one deer and that can cause you $5,000 damage.”

Like much of the high-tech equipment available to truckers, night vision is available in some luxury automobiles. But trucking--driven by tight schedules, an abundance of regulation, high costs and the sheer hugeness of the vehicles--pushes the envelope. In trucking, high tech goes beyond mere gadgetry.

“Let’s say a truck driver is in a situation where his cell phone is ringing and his log book is dragged across the steering wheel as he tries to put in his mileage while he crosses a state line,” said Ted Scherzinger, senior technologist for Kenworth Truck Co. “At the same time, he sees he is passing a weight scale entrance he has to get into.”

And then a car--commonly known to truckers as a “four-wheeler”--chooses that very moment to cut in front. “That truck driver is doomed to failure,” Scherzinger said.

“My vision of the future is that the driver uses voice commands to decide whether or not to answer the phone, and the mileage is automatically marked in an electronic logbook when the GPS system detects a state line. And as he passes the weight scale, all the necessary information is sent from a transmitter tag on his truck so he does not have to pull in.”

This vision has been developed as an ongoing project at the research and development unit of Kenworth in Renton, Wash. Although the company is seen as a leader in the field, it’s hardly the only one using technology to modernize trucking.

The largest truck manufacturer in the country, Freightliner Corp., soon will be offering a Truck Productivity Computer option that fits into the standard radio dash slot. It combines a processor that can handle inputs from magnetic card readers, bar code scanners, digital cameras, game controllers and a variety of other devices with navigational devices, wireless communications and an old-fashioned AM/FM radio.

Volvo Trucks has its own futuristic prototype that has many of the same features, plus an adaptive cruise control that uses radar. “You can set it to keep a certain distance between the truck and objects in front of you,” said Volvo spokesman Randy Bolinger. “If a car cuts in front of the truck, the truck will automatically slow down until it reaches that distance again.”

Another unique Volvo feature is tied to its visual lane-recognition system. “If you go out of your lane, the seat vibrates like you are hitting the edge of the road,” Bolinger said.

Kenworth gained its leading-edge reputation largely by featuring its futuristic prototypes on the Nashville Network show “18 Wheels of Justice” and at various trucking shows. Its most advanced model, High Tech II, boasts an on-board computer, called the Vehicle Information Center, that features a swivel screen on the dash with customizable readouts.

Messages--such as “Roadside assistance needed,” “Fuel purchased” or “Empty and available”--can be programmed into the e-mail system. That system, which operates via the cell phone hookup, resembles Blackberry e-mailing and is limited to short messages.

Kenworth earlier tested full-fledged wireless Internet in a truck, but technical obstacles kept the top speed at 9,600 baud, far slower than home dial-up modems in common use.

“It took 15 minutes for our home page to come in,” said Kenworth engineer David Warren. Nothing on the immediate wireless horizon will make that much faster.

Most truckers who use the Internet a lot make use of modem stations common at truck stops. “We pay all our bills and do all our banking online,” said Bobbi Siemons, who shares the driving of a rig with her husband, Gary. “We send e-mail to our two teenagers [ages 17 and 19] back home too.”

She also uses a CD-ROM mapping program on a laptop to plan routes. For fun, they have a Sony PlayStation in the truck.

In Kenworth’s High Tech II prototype, a resting driver can sit at a fold-out table in the back of the cab to use a laptop. At the flip of a switch, a screen comes down from the ceiling that can be used, via infrared hookup, as the computer’s external screen.

The screen also can be used with a projection TV hooked into the DVD player that sits in an alcove with the multi-disc CD player, VHS player and AM/FM radio. Below that is a refrigerator that features a door in which a back-lit, digitized picture can be displayed.

“Perfect for a picture of Mom,” Warren said.

On the main dash panel, all the readouts are digital and can be customized. “The idea is to give the driver the information he needs when he needs it,” Scherzinger said. “For example, on a hill, a driver is not going to be interested in the computed fuel economy; he knows it will be bad. But he will want to know if the transmission is heating up. Going downhill, he will want to monitor the brake status.”

Scherzinger showed a 1971 picture of a Boeing 747 cockpit with dozens of gauges. By contrast, a 1995 picture of a 757 has only a fraction as many.

“If you have 25 gauges in a truck and have to monitor them all, you might miss something important,” Warren said. “With this multi-function display, a driver can make a gauge into an exception report, which means it will only flash on the screen if there is something going on outside the norm.”

The panel also features a fingerprint recognition port linked to the ignition. Only authorized drivers can get the engine to start.

There have been failures. The engineers developed hot and cold cup holders for Tech II. “Most of the drivers who saw them said they would not want to spend money on them,” Scherzinger said.

And at one point, they had voice recognition on the cell phone, e-mail and navigation systems. “I got into the cab one day and they were all talking to each other, repeating things back and forth,” he said.

At the truck stop, drivers have a mixed reaction to such innovations.

“I don’t want no electronic logbook,” Gary Siemons said with a smile. “Got to stay too honest.” He took it all lightly, but Bill, who did not want to give his last name, of San Diego was dead serious. “It’s Big Brother looking over your shoulder,” he said sternly. “I’m at the mercy of whoever might want to use that information. I don’t think George Washington would have thought much of it.”

As an independent owner-operator, Eddie Piercy of Keytesville, Mo., doesn’t have a company following his every move. For him, high tech is his cell phone and another item.

“See those rabbit ears up there?” he said, pointing to a well-worn TV antenna attached next to his passenger-side mirror. “That’s it.”

But even Piercy liked the idea of a video camera to show him the blind spot on the passenger side, a big problem on trailer trucks. In fact, almost all the drivers, except Bill, liked it.

“I would like to have about seven of them,” Siemons said. “These idiot four-wheelers out there are driving me crazy.”

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David Colker covers personal technology. He can be reached at david.colker@latimes.com.