Many Massachusetts Trucking Companies Score Poorly on Safety

Fox News Boston reports that many Boston-area trucking companies are scoring poorly on FMCSA vehicle and driver safety ratings. In their recent segment, Dangerous Trucks on Mass Roads, the most common violations were poor brakes on vehicles and driver HOS violations. Scores were based on the FMCSA SafeStat scoring system.

In Mass, “Commercial trucks were involved in 2,310 crashes in 2008 alone -- accidents that resulted in 20 deaths.”

These results underscore the need for EOBR requirements in high-risk trucking companies. In addition to tracking vehicle performance, these systems provide significant visibility into driver performance and can automate HOS compliance with electronic driver logs.



One example of a local fleet leveraging on-board systems is Demoulas’ Supermarkets of Tewksbury, MA. Read more…

Author: Frank Moreno

Cadec and Velociti Expand Partnership to Offer Nationwide Field Service

Cadec announced today that it has partnered with Velociti Inc. to offer a new, nationwide field service and support program to its customers. Called Cadec Express Service, the new program provides a comprehensive nationwide installation, field service, support and repair solution for Cadec’s North American trucking fleet customer base.

Velociti specializes in mobile device installation and service for trucking fleets. Long considered leaders in transportation technology, Velociti has been working with Cadec for the past five years, supplementing Cadec’s own staff in the field. The company employs hundreds of technicians and operates a network of more than 50 drive-through service centers across North America.

Read the full press release here.

Author: Frank Moreno

Cadec Customers Recognized for Industry Leadership by IFMA

Cadec customers Ben E Keith Foods and AGAR Supply were recently honored by the International Foodservice Manufacturers Association (IFMA) for distributor leadership and overall excellence within the foodservice industry.

“Ben E. Keith Foods was honored with the IFMA Excellence in Distribution Award.”

“AGAR Supply Company, Inc. was named the winner of the IFMA Distributor Sales & Marketing Performance Award.”

The full article can be found here: http://www.ifdaonline.org/webarticles/anmviewer.asp?a=665&z=1

Author: Frank Moreno

MPG Per Driver – Is this a valid KPI for Fleet Management?

Since the 2008 fuel crisis, many fleet managers are being convinced to measure and track miles per gallon (MPG) in an effort to reduce fuel consumption. Newer engines and vehicle designs boast lower fuel usage, but most companies are using their older vehicles longer and have very few new, fuel efficient vehicles.

So a common request among many fleets is to leverage on-board computers and fleet management systems measure MPG not only by vehicle, but by driver. Their goals are to identify drivers that violate established acceptable standards for MPG for training purposes or potential replacement. Is this a valid measurement?

Tracking MPG across your fleet makes perfect sense. Identifying those units that are consuming more fuel than others and ultimately costing more money may indicate when it makes more sense to repair or replace a vehicle. When this information is integrated with vehicle maintenance systems, there are clear efficiencies gained. Tracking MPG by route also provides useful data.

However, can accurate data be gained with KPIs that track MPG per driver? Consider these questions:
Are the drivers using the same vehicles every day?
Are the drivers driving the same routes every day?
Are they delivering the same cargo every day?
Are the driving the same routes at the same time each day?
Are the driving the same routes on a weekday vs a weekend?
Are you alerting drivers when they are exceeding MPG goals?

Optimizing fuel consumption is one of the most fundamental goals of any fleet manager, and analyzing MPG (in addition to idling, speeding, over RPM) make perfect business sense. MPG by driver may however provide inaccurate information.

If you are tracking MPG by driver, please comment on how you use it. Are these pitfalls real? How does your fleet avoid these?

Author: Frank Moreno

Fleet Management Fundamentals Podcast

Check out my radio interview with M2M Magazine, available as a podcast or streaming over the web. http://www.wsradio.com/internet-talk-radio.cfm/shows/M2M-Radio.html

Author: Frank Moreno

Fleet Management Industry Needs Standard Technologies

There are several shared initiatives across the trucking industry lately – reducing fuel, going green, paperless deliveries, improving safety, etc. – however one of the most common is supply chain visibility.

At the recent NPTC Conference, many private fleet executives voiced their concern regarding the challenges they face in integrating the many disparate technologies they use in their organization to improve their visibility across their supply chain and increase productivity. Consider the technologies that are often used in most of today’s leading fleets: routing, dispatch, fleet management, warehouse management, maintenance systems, hr/payroll systems, and financial systems are just a few of the core systems needed to run their business. Unfortunately, many of these systems are very insular in their design and provide limited data integration capabilities. For example, two of the most common routing platforms used in the private fleet industry can only export their data as a flat file or .CSV file. The same holds true for the industry’s most widely used dispatch system. Many other systems provide APIs (application programming interface) that are based on proprietary languages or formats.

It’s time for an industry group or consortium to define certain technology standards for integrating transportation systems. If we look at the global software leaders and enterprise application providers, all of them have embraced XML-based web services and service oriented architecture as the standard way to interoperate across disparate applications. This is extremely prevalent in the supply chain arena, where legacy, mainframe applications are now accessible by more current web-based systems. Karen Butner, IBM’s Supply Chain Management Lead for the IBM Institute for Business Value describes SOA as the “Blueprint for Supply Chain Visibility”.

Now is the time to standardize the data made available to and from fleet management systems (assets, accounts, products, driver performance, vehicle performance, delivery data, time and attendance data, etc.) as web services, making them consumable in a standard way by any other system. Cadec will push to be at the forefront of this initiative, and enable fleet managers to achieve better supply chain visibility and improve the overall returns on their technology investments.

Author: Frank Moreno

Fleet Management ROI Discussion at NPTC

From NPTC – While the attendance at this week’s National Private Truck Council’s conference was a bit light compared to year’s past, there was no shortage of news and interesting discussion across the industry. The Benchmarking data presented by NPTC’s Tom Moore highlighted a number of significant trends and observations:

- Customer service (mainly on-time arrivals) remains far and away the number one reason why companies operate their own fleet
- Reducing out of route miles is the top method of increasing fuel efficiency
- There is a increasing interest in leasing of tractors among private fleets
- The amount of Empty Miles Driven increased in 2008 (possible correlation with the increase in fuel prices)
- There has been a major increase in Going Green initiatives in private fleets
- With reduced number of drivers, incentive-based pay plans have increased and are working
- Technology is #10 in the Top 10 Challenges facing Private Fleets (Economy/Costs was #1)

Also, the ROI session was very interesting as leading executives from Giant Eagle, Bridgestone Tire and Cadec customer Mennel Milling presented on ROI from On-board Technology. While the current returns were not surprising (efficiency & productivity gains, automating manual processes, route optimization, reduced idle time, etc.) it was the concerns they highlighted that were of most interest. Common to all speakers and consistent at the conference was the concern about the amount of data their technology systems provided and the challenges around integrating their systems and interpreting the data into meaningful business intelligence.

The concept of supply chain visibility, business intelligence and actionable information is becoming a theme across many vendors. Be sure to consider a system’s ability to provide visibility not just into its own system, but across multiple transportation systems within the infrastructure (such as Cadec’s Insight system). Cadec will be sponsoring an upcoming webcast on this topic with Fleet Owner and NPTC in June. Visit www.cadec.com for details in the coming weeks.

Author: Frank Moreno