Osterberg told the audience that he had four “keys to success” when it comes to fleet safety: Hire the “right” drivers (and retain them); train them effectively; manage driver-performance actively, and leverage technology to enhance safety programs.

Traditional safety metrics are lagging, not leading indicators, he noted. Rather, he said Effectiveness flows from the ability to identify and proactively manage those leading indicators, and technology can definitely help to get the job done.

“Technology enables visibility to driver behavior,” Osterberg said. “In the past, it was a crash that raised our awareness of an aggressive driver. Now we can [use driver performance monitoring technology to help us] detect indicators of problematic behavior to enable interventions to remediate the behavior preemptively.”

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Section 111 of the new law, for instance, requires the Health and Human Services secretary to “promulgate regulations onsanitary transportation practices for the transportationof food,” and also requires theFDA (Food and Drug Administration) “to conduct a study on the transportation of food, including the unique needs of rural and frontier areas.”

Section 204 requires the Health and Human Services secretary to “improve tracking and tracing of processed foods and fruits and vegetables that are raw agricultural commodities in the event of a food-borne illness outbreak; and establish standards for the type of information, format, and time frame for persons to submit records to aid the secretary in such tracking and tracing.”

The Food Safety Modernization Act is, by no means, the first and only move to help assure that food remains safe to eat from farm to the fork. Shippers of some cargo, like perishable food and pharmaceuticals, have been asking fleets to step up and assume additional responsibility for the integrity and safety of their cargo for some time.

They are and have been requiring carriers to deploy technology to help assure the integrity and safety of their goods and, in the case of temperature-controlled food for instance, also help to reduce spoilage and loss. The shippers’ customers’ in this case are the ones holding the whip handle, according to Dr. John Ryan, president of Ryan Systems. Ryan has spent over 25 years implementing high-technology quality control systems and is credited with piloting the first farm-to-fork, Internet-enabled food traceability system using sensors and RFID technology to help get the job done.

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The company, which was founded in 2007, converts sunlight and waste CO2 to infrastructure-ready diesel, ethanol or commodity chemicals with no dependence on biomass feedstocks, downstream processing or precious natural resources. Though many biofuels companies have tried making cellulosic ethanol from non-food sources, none have succeeded at a commercial scale.

With this recent funding, which brings funding to $110 million to date, Joule plans to expand and operate a demonstration plant in Hobbs, N.M., to test its process at a much larger scale. The facility has the potential to grow to 1,000 acres for commercial production.

“Our goal since inception has been to enable large-scale, renewable fuel production at unprecedented costs and volumes in the near term, without the obstacles and slow pace of biofuel progress,” says president and CEO William J. Sims. “On the heels of our latest funding round and technology advancement, we’re in a very strong position to make it happen as planned.”

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In many ways, while technology is evident everywhere in the business world, accurately defining a ‘technology’ company has in many ways become more difficult, now that most companies provide various technology-based products and services in addition to their core offerings. For instance, it’s expected that transportation providers, aside from physically moving a shipment from point A to B, will provide shippers with the ability to track their shipments online at the very least, while many have even developed their own robust software products and services that are branded and marketed individually.

Our eighth annual FL100 list of leading software and technology companies reflects this trend and how it’s unfolding in the food and beverage industry. This year’s compilation includes well-known, pure-play technology companies such as Oracle and SAP, along with younger companies like Intelleflex and GT Nexus, who are joining a new generation of providers whose technology advancements in areas like RFID and cloud computing, respectively, are not only exciting but are making it possible to meet the challenges associated with tracking, tracing, and compliance that are imperative for today’s food supply chains.

So, while defining a technology company may not be as clear-cut as it used to be, one thing is clear: technology is a competitive differentiator in our industry, whether you’re a food shipper or transportation provider.

M.J. Kellner Foodservice would agree. They are the recipient of this year’s Golden Pallet Award for small distributors. Their willingness to tackle a business challenge head-on by building a new facility complete with state of the art software and technology (WMS, voice picking, etc.) has yielded a healthy return on their investment, some of which the company itself wasn’t even expecting. Check out their success story on page 34.

Technology is also a predominant theme in our feature on maintaining cold chain integrity.

For example, Great Dane Trailers is making it possible for shippers to get more life out of their reefer containers with their ThermoGuard product. The technology focuses on improving the efficacy of the interior liner, which degrades over time, thereby making the reefer more expensive to operate. Specifically, ThermoGuard reefers can potentially reduce cooling unit run time by more than 1,000 hours over a five-year period.

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“Being an industry leader has been central to Cox’s business strategy since its inception over 30 years ago,” said Jay Smith, president of Cox Transportation Services. “The decision to retrofit our fleet with Solus aerodynamic skirts was driven by our desire to be fuel efficient and increase profitability.”

The Solus split skirt can provide a 5% fuel economy improvement, the company said. It includes a two-piece design with 8 in. of static ground clearance and the rugged flex skirt panels offer 20 in. of total ground clearance. The panels weigh less than 200 lbs.

“This investment gives Cox a significant competitive advantage, making it one of the most fuel efficient and technologically advanced fleets on the East Coast. As the trucking industry continues to evolve and opportunities arise, it is the hard working and forward thinking companies like Cox that will be positioned to thrive,” said Richard Wood, president of Solus.

Cox is also evaluating Solus’ wheel cavity cover, which can add an additional 1.3% fuel economy improvement, Solus said.

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Myth No. 1 was described as under-engineering a truck can save money on fuel. The translation, observed Wilson, is buying the cheapest possible truck. But that is not at all the way to go, said Mark Stumne, truck engineer for GECFS.

“The idea is not to go for the lowest-powered engine—which won’t save fuel if it is constantly run up against the governor— but to first match your truck specs to the business need that must be met by the vehicle,” he explained. “From there, the fleet can shop those specs around for the best price. The right truck specs will save on fuel, maintenance and downtime; will reduce driver turnover; and yield better remarketing results later.”

Collin Reid, GECFS strategic consultant, added that “under-spec’ing the truck will come out in higher maintenance costs, especially for brakes, and fuel economy will suffer as will driver productivity” from giving them less truck than they need for the job.

Myth No. 2 is that trucks are not impacted by small changes in payload (after they are spec’d, built and delivered). “Payload changes can potentially overload a vehicle or greatly affect the weight distribution of the truck/body package,” stated Tim Craft, president of TiNik Inc., which supplies truck/van-related equipment to both fleets and OEMs. “Changes in payload and equipment added to handle it may also interfere with existing upfits on the body.” He noted a common problem area in the vehicle-ordering process is when a fleet wants to switch from dual to single rear axles, “when that’s done, something has to give on weight.”

According to Stumne, it’s important to bear in mind that the new emissions technology mounted on trucks has severely limited the “real estate” on the frame rails for adding equipment on vocational trucks. “PTO clearances have been limited,” he noted. “And all these things—DEF tanks, etc.—have added weight.” He recommended that once a fleet has modified a spec, that they do a load study of the weight—especially on the front axles—before proceeding.

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The online forum, womenintruckingblog.com, was created with the support of national trucking and logistics company Con-Way Inc. It’s open to anyone, regardless of gender, position or driving experience.

WIT hopes that the blog will serve to continue the organization’s mission of encouraging women to pursue trucking careers and supporting them as they grow and develop in the industry.

“Drivers are some of the most technologically advanced people I know and many of them interact via social media each day,” said Ellen Voie, WIT’s President/CEO. “By offering this forum we can give our members the opportunity to connect with others who share their involvement in trucking and to learn more about our organization in the process.”

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“Instead of licensing and locally deploying software, people in the vehicle routing space are much more [open] to cloud services,” says Ken Wood, senior vice president, product strategy, at Descartes.

“These technologies are coming together to form a new approach we like to call the ‘connected fleet,’” adds Tanya Roberts, SVP of marketing at GreenRoad. “With this new trend of the connected fleet, managers now have eyes in every vehicle, and on every driver.”

Integration of fleet management systems such as fuel consumption data, routing, and maintenance information is a current trend that customers are asking for. “Businesses today are looking for one company that is completely integrated with their current operations,” says Cyndi Brandt, vice president of marketing for Roadnet Technologies. This strategy helps a company to effortlessly keep track of all of their records.

According to Will Salter, president and CEO of Paragon, a developing trend in the routing industry is a shift toward centralized routing. “Routing trends are linked to what our customers want,” says Salter.

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The real danger of using cell phones is not the risk of being caught. The accident risk is equal to driving while legally intoxicated, according to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine.

To help mitigate this risk, fleets can use applications that automatically lock down mobile devices when they detect motion. The real challenge, however, may be restricting drivers from using personal phones while operating company vehicles.

The transportation industry has a precedence of taking controversial measures to mitigate risk. In most cases, measures that seem controversial at first soon become standard practice. Technology that makes it possible to enforce restrictions on drivers’ personal cell phones, for instance, may at first seem to drivers to be an intrusive measure.

Consider the history of electronic onboard recorders (EOBRs). For years many fleets resisted using EOBRs fearing they would cause a mass exodus of drivers. Today electronic logs are used by the majority of fleets and widely accepted by drivers.

Technology that monitors driver behavior is also widespread. Many fleets use management systems that report risky behaviors such as speeding, sudden lane changes and panic braking, and other events the moment they occur.

Since fleets already use technology to enforce safety and compliance, is using technology to restrict employees’ use of cell phones while driving any different?

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This technology, called Fuel Island Manager, uses radio-frequency identification, or RFID, to initiate transactions at the fuel dispenser instead of requiring a card. Fuel Island Manager, developed by QuikQ LLC, is distributed by Comdata Networks.

Love’s Travel Stops in September announced plans to install RFID technology at its 270 truck stops.
To operate the system, a trucking company must install RFID tags in each of its vehicles. The tags automatically activate fuel dispensers at RFID-equipped locations as the vehicles pull alongside them, according to each trucking company’s specifications for that vehicle and location, TravelCenters said.

TravelCenters said it expects to begin installation at locations nationwide in 2012.

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