GE TIP announced availability of its GE VeriWise asset tracking technology for refrigerated trailers, effective this summer.
Navteq, a provider of digital map data, plans to launch its Navteq Traffic solution in the third quarter this year. Navteq Traffic allows on-board navigation systems to provide personalized, real-time traffic information for a driver’s chosen route.
Arcline 2000 Inc., a provider of transportation software systems for truckload, LTL, and brokers, announced the release of Version 2. The new version adds faxing and e-mailing functions directly from the system and allows users to attach photos, letters and documents in several formats using a separate data table.
Qualcomm said Ace Relocation Systems, Inc., an agent of Atlas World Group, signed a contract to use the mobile phone-based OmniOne mobile communications system as its wireless workforce solution. San Diego-based Ace Relocation is the first household goods carrier to deploy the OmniOne system.
Nextel and Qualcomm (www.qualcomm.com) are working together on the QChat solution, designed to operate on CDMA2000 1X Release A wireless networks internationally. Nextel plans to make QChat compatible with its walkie-talkie service, offered on the iDEN platform, so Nextel customers in the United States can reach customers of CDMA networks abroad.
TMW Systems Inc. released the Detention Tracking feature for the TMWSuite enterprise software system. The new feature can be used to automatically notify dispatchers and customers whenever a detention situation exists, to automatically bill for detention time, and to create reports to track and compare detention charges and costs from various customers.
PeopleNet Communications signed 45 customers during the first quarter of this year and recently announced the signing of Nashville, Tenn.-based Bridgestone/Firestone as its 1,000th customer.
Aether Systems Inc. said its Transportation and Logistics Division has been awarded certification to the ISO 9001:2000 standard. The registration addresses the design, development, manufacture, installation and service of wireless data and location tracking systems and covers processes performed at four locations that manage the MobileMax, GeoLogic, 20/20V, and TrailerMax products.
Some fleet operations choose to accept driver turnover as inevitable. They have tried every tactic they could conjure up, and they refuse to participate in bidding wars based on pay. If this describes your operation now or, perhaps, in the near future, consider appealing to something fundamental within the trucker’s mentality – a sense of control and independence.
Crete Carrier Corp., one of the nation’s largest privately held trucking companies, boasts one of the truckload segment’s lowest turnover rates at 35 percent. Yes, the company pays well, but that’s hardly unusual. One factor that does set Crete apart from many of its competitors is the fact that it offers drivers a choice of loads. This benefit is “definitely a reason why drivers stick around,” Lee Hoffman, Crete’s vice president of operations, told a group of trucking company executives at a recent Innovative Computing Corp. (ICC) user’s conference in Las Vegas.
To offer drivers a choice of loads, the company uses a feature called LoadOffer in its Innovative Enterprise Software (IES), an AS/400-based system from ICC. The Brentwood, Tenn.-based software company developed LoadOffer in response to a desire by Crete to offer a choice. The trucking company uses LoadOffer to move more than 11,000 loads per week while offering drivers a choice of three loads per dispatch. (For more on Crete’s driver-friendly approach to dispatch, see “Do choosy drivers choose you?”, Operations, March 2003.)
LoadOffer is available to all IES users. As is typical for application providers, ICC leveraged development driven by a single customer into technology it can offer to others.
Liberty, Mo.-based American Central Transport (ACT), an IES user since 1997, implemented LoadOffer early this year to provide its mixed fleet of owner-operators and company drivers an automated system for choosing loads, says Bob Kretsinger, senior vice president of operations.
