THE CONNECTED TRUCK

- G. Ray Gompf

The Internet connectivity has become equally as important to the transportation industry as the power unit designed to pull the freight, the fuel and the insurance. Shippers want to know precisely where their freight is and exactly when it’s delivered or about to be delivered and they’re demanding the ability to track the progress of the movement of that freight. All of this is now possible, whether it’s achieved via a system built into the truck or a device such as a smart phone, tablet or laptop computer. But further than that, truck drivers, with one of their devices, can discover where freight is available for pick up within a selected radius in a lane of their choice using apps specifically designed for the purpose — XYpper.com is the foremost app for freight finding without hours wasted scanning load boards. XYpper sends you the message to your device telling you where the freight is, acting like your back office. With a few taps of your screen, you can book that load in seconds and all done by textual communications so instructions are clear and tracking an available option. Connectivity is now critical for every step of the supply chain. Connectivity is also critical in tracking loads that may have been stolen and assist in recovery. On the other side, the level of connectivity saves copious amounts of time, in that the closest available truck can be dispatched with certainty. Connectivity actually increases capacity by knowing if there is additional room for a smaller load that could be twinned, going in the same direction. In days of old — a few years ago — the driver would leave his or her family and there would be very limited contact between the driver and home folk until his or her return however long that separation may have been. With today’s connectivity, that personal contact isn’t just by voice when a phone could be found or if you could find more than one bar but by visual connectivity. Virtual home visits are not just possible but absolute reality. Even safety meetings with remote people is not just possible, but happens with more regularity than one might think. Today’s connectivity allows for complete knowledge of traffic situations anywhere, and weather patterns can be brought up in an instant where alternate routes can be planned before getting into situations that could cause a shut down. Even dash cameras can be and are live streamed online, not just to monitor if a driver is operating safely but to verify the inexperience of the car drivers with whom the truck driver must cope. Truck drivers have the ability to plan better, be trackable, have direct availability to family, dispatch or virtually anyone who happens to have access to that connectivity. Connectivity should also play a role in recruiting and retention. Since truck driving is by and large a single, solitary kind of existence, the ability for normal human connection with family and friends should be paramount in attracting talent to the driver pool. Driving allows the solitude that drivers often seek, but just because they seek solitude doesn’t mean they don’t need to communicate with home as needed. This kind of communication is most often the responsibility of the driver as a supplement to the connectivity with the carrier, but why? A recognition by the carrier that this driver is sacrificing so much for the carriers bottom line would go a long way towards the retention side of the coin. That device upon which virtually every trucker depends for communications is also the device that allows for entertainment during downtimes. Even many of the games people play for entertainment on their devices require connectivity to the Internet. Online commerce has grown exponentially over the past decade to the point where bricks and mortar stores don’t really need to exist. From the seat of your

truck, you can order your needs and have them carried out to the truck. Now you can order a pizza and have it delivered to your truck as easily as from your home. Talk about the comforts of home. Now connectivity is about to take another turn where not just people communicate but the trucks themselves connect with each other. If this kind of connectivity can become infallible, then trucks could become truly autonomous. Technology isn’t there yet but it is working on it. There have been tests, some successful, some not so much. The idea is to prevent collisions, if that’s ever going to be possible. Nothing created by man will ever be absolutely perfect. At some point in time, there will be a catastrophic failure. There have been interruptions of connectivity in the banking systems when it’s been impossible to access the cashless society to which we’ve become accustomed, actually shutting down the localized economy until repairs were effected. Hence, the driverless autonomous truck is still well in the future, therefore while developments are in trials, a human is going to remain inside the truck to override failure, if overriding is even possible. The problem being that this kind of connectivity requires band width well beyond today’s capability. Bandwidth at 5G which is the new standard is like a pipeline that has a capacity of 10,000 barrels of oil an hour. That’s the limit. It won’t allow 10,001 barrels an hour. The requirement of bandwidth for near infallibility of autonomous trucks at today’s online usage would require a minimum of two or three times the capacity of today. But as everything else in technology advances, capacity of the system is never adequate to attain perfection. Few people remember when online speed was 300 baud. Everything we use today on line was possible at 300 baud but a simple email by today’s requirement would take days to be delivered. At 4G it takes seconds, at 5G it is milliseconds. As our requirement for more capacity increases that 5G becomes slower and that big pipeline needs to be enlarged. The comparison between the trucking industry with its capacity to move freight and the capacity of the Internet is a reasonable description. Each have their own limitations based on the number of trailers available to move freight so the internet can only move bits of information based on the size of the pipe through which the information bits travel. The connected truck needs to compete for bandwidth with every other industry, exactly the same way it has to compete for road space with other road users, especially during rush hours. Banking is a huge consumer of bandwidth. Governments are huge consumers. Healthcare systems are quickly absorbing capacity exponentially. Personal communication requirements enormous bandwidth. Then there’s every other sector competing for space on the highway. Since bandwidth is subject to failures of small portions on occasion, connectivity may be forced to find an alternate routing which is going to have a slowing effect on the ability to maintain expected speed. Similar to the truck having speed limits, hours of service and risk of weather related shut downs or rerouting possibilities. Even the COVID-19 pandemic has stressed Internet capacity as people switched their buying habits from bricks and mortar stores to online providers, but it certainly did reduce the number of commuters clogging the urban highways. The connectivity networks are under construction constantly upgrading speed and capacity. Constantly, users are finding more and more ways to consume that extra speed and capacity almost to the point of negating the gains. Hence, that is why true autonomy of road use vehicles is still decades in the future. While it’s possible, it’s just not safe enough yet.