It could be something serious and elemental, like floods lasting weeks, wildfires threatening whole swaths of a state, tornado winds that can level homes and bridges, an earthquake that can do the same—or worse. Or not: Maybe it’s a smaller-scale blizzard, icy roads or a severe electrical rainstorm. Or it might even be something man-made and as common as an extensive traffic snarl-up that brings roadways to a halt.
Across the broad variety of possible emergencies and disasters, these events can hinder or bring to a full stop the operations of just about any fleet, often directly preventing the fleet’s essential functions. That includes fleets that serve the needs of all kinds of private and public organizations as well as trucking companies transporting all manner of goods from Point A to Point B.
The good news is technology can offer fleets a great deal of resilience to find ways around disaster and trouble situations. But if you haven’t done the right thinking and put the right plans in place before a problem shows up on your doorstep, good luck running to catch up afterwards.
If you can make it there
That’s exactly the sort of advice you may hear from Keith Kerman, New York City’s chief fleet officer and deputy commissioner of the city’s Dept. of Citywide Administrative Services, or DCAS. Across scores of city agencies ranging from the police and fire departments to sanitation, transportation, corrections, parks and environmental protection, he explains that DCAS has “major management roles” for some 28,000 city vehicles of all kinds—the largest municipal fleet in the nation.
It’s quite an extensive purview, and Kerman, the first to serve in his position, notes that a good deal of rethinking has taken place regarding the roles of fleet in emergency preparedness since Hurricanes Irene in 2011 and Sandy the following year, especially the latter. “One of the most important things I try to do is, number one, to recognize and institutionalize the critical role of fleet operations in emergencies,” he says. “Fleet is not just the guys in the garage fixing trucks and sedans. Fleet could be integral to your emergency power program for critical facilities. Fleet could be fuel supply in a fuel emergency for everybody in your organization or even your region, public and private.”
Indeed, Sandy precipitated the largest emergency-based fuels crisis in U.S. history, he explains, and helped lead to a number of innovations in place now to bolster New York’s disaster preparedness. After that storm, DCAS mapped out and is now nearly finished implementing what will be, all told, a $19 million to $20 million fleet emergency resilience program.
“One thing we’ve learned—sometimes painfully—is it is often very, very hard to get assets in place after you’ve been hit by a storm. And whether it’s in-house resources, contract resources, or getting assets pre-positioned and ready to go, don’t wait till the storm hits.”
- Keith Kerman, New York City chief fleet officer
The program includes doubling the city’s fuel trucks from 35 to 70, with 14 now dedicated for gasoline supplies, a particular headache during Sandy’s aftermath; adding another 200 portable light towers, bringing the city’s assets to some 580 of those devices; doubling the number of power generators, including large 500-kW and 1-mW units, from about 50 to over 100; adding another 60 forklifts; purchasing three more high-capacity water pumps for pumping out flooded emergency access areas; and expanding some trailer and towing capacity to get things like forklifts and Bobcat loaders where they’re needed.
The equipment came after many lessons learned the hard way, like the dire post-Sandy fuel situation for New York and the region. “We had a regional fuels crisis impacting every New Yorker and people’s ability to just go to work and do what they do in their personal lives,” he explains. “And more critically for us in the immediate aftermath was that limited fuel availability was hampering all the emergency response in relation to the storm.”
The city, though it can hold more than 1 million gals. of fuel in its own bulk fuel tanks, didn’t have a very effective fuel management system in place when Sandy hit and found itself having to fuel not only its own vehicles but uniformed workers’ personal vehicles, private ambulances, doctors’ and nurses’ vehicles, and other essential units. The fuel shortage also affected everything from school buses once schools were ordered to reopen to food carts providing food relief and taxicabs trying to take up slack for disabled public transit.
Part of the solution has included moving to a WEX fuel card and management system, according to Kerman. During the storm, the city would have fuel in some locations, but in others closer to the storm’s heavy impact areas like Brooklyn and Queens, “our fuel sites were constantly drying up,” he recalls. New York now has a citywide purchasing program for private fueling and has also linked its internal fueling to the WEX card.
So not only do city employees have access to “pretty much anybody who’s got fuel out there, public or private,” Kerman says, but DCAS is looking to leverage WEX’s reporting and data capabilities to monitor trends in fuel availability. “If they see that fuel sales and transactions have gone down 50% in Staten Island or Queens, that would give us a pretty good idea that we’re having a retail fuel problem there,” he adds.
There are other ways fleets can track fuel availability, even in emergency situations. In the weeks following Sandy, for instance, the city tapped GasBuddy.com, a crowd-sourced info site that shows users nearby fuel availability and prices. Kerman notes it “was very effective and helpful in the scheme of things.”
As far as the other equipment, he says one big innovation has been the city’s light towers; nine of the new units are completely solar and programmable. Although the solar light towers can only operate for part of the night, they emit no emissions and don’t require personnel to refuel, turn them on, or repair them as often as the diesel-powered towers. Kerman says he hopes the solar-power industry can develop more robust units and the city can someday move to all-solar equipment.
Why the forklifts? DCAS found itself having to move some 3,500 wrecked cars and boats that Sandy left blocking public streets and emergency access ways, and 600 city fleet vehicles that also were destroyed. Smaller-scale but similar damage is seen in many disaster situations. Forklifts can help solve such problems, and since they can be used in the city’s day-to-day operations, that’s another bit of advice Kerman has for fleets: Look for technology and equipment that increases your disaster readiness that you can put to use in normal operations.
“Look where you can develop internal assets,” he says. “Not every organization is going to be able to invest in the way we were able to, but look at where you have current operations that you need—or could offset costs by having—additional assets like we did. Look for synergies with your regular operations to offset costs.” Another exercise the city did post-Sandy was to look at whatever items had to be rented, and has since added capacity in those areas.
Emergency contracts for supply chain redundancies are a big part of disaster prep as well.
“Absolutely have emergency contract relationships in place. We do have large-scale rental contracts with companies like Hertz, Mack and United Rentals,” Kerman notes. “You could go a year or two where you don’t touch the contract, or you could have another year where you’re spending millions on it.”
And once you’ve thought it through and bolstered your capacities and capabilities where needed, get those assets in the right places. “One thing we’ve learned—sometimes painfully—is it is often very, very hard to get assets in place after you’ve been hit by a storm,” Kerman advises. “And whether it’s in-house resources, contract resources, or getting assets pre-positioned and ready to go, don’t wait till the storm hits.”
Hazardous materials
Because trucking companies often are operating heavy equipment, their assets themselves—especially if not handled correctly—can quickly add to or create an emergency situation on the road, and you can learn a lot from fleets that deal with hazardous materials and conditions. How about using advanced video games to prepare for a range of emergency situations—from black ice on a steep descent to a blowout on one of your tractors’ drive wheels?
That’s essentially the strategy employed by Lake Wales, FL-based Oakley Transport Inc., a food-grade bulk liquids hauler that expects its fleet will number some 500 Volvo VNL tractors and nearly 800 trailers by early next year. The company transports everything from food oils, juices and milk to distilled spirits, and in the latter case, those products are considered hazardous materials.
Ryan Walls, Oakley’s director of human resources, explains that the company’s bulk tank trailers—unlike multi-chambered fuel tankers—“are just one big, shotgun trailer cylinder.” Products transported are therefore constantly moving, and it produces thousands of gallons worth of weight-shifting and force from inertia.
“In other words, if you have to stand on the brakes for some reason, it’s going to hit you, and you’re going to feel it,” Walls says. “You don’t want to be on the road the first time that happens.” To help prepare drivers to handle its trucks proficiently, the company has invested in a highly sophisticated driving simulator, complete with moving seat and controls that match Oakley’s trucks. Users “will actually feel a simulation of that ‘slosh’ slamming them in the back so they can get a feeling for what it is,” he explains.
That’s new driver trainees, but Oakley’s experienced drivers also use the simulator to compete to see who’s best on various hazardous courses the company has designed. There’s even a second driver capability where a trainer can enter the simulation as, for example, “that pain-in-the-neck, hacked-off motorist who cuts in front of our truck and slams on the brakes,” Walls tells Fleet Owner.
Craig Stevens, Oakley’s director of strategic initiatives, says the company also includes Bendix’s Wingman Active Cruise with Braking systems on its trucks, and the technology has proven its worth in helping avoid collisions. “We’ve already documented a couple of near-misses where it saved us from a probable severe accident,” he contends—one of those during a run on a very foggy stretch of Interstate 10 in Louisiana at 4 a.m. one morning.
“A tractor-trailer up ahead of our truck had lost its tandem [connection] on a double trailer. There was no way our driver had the ability to see it,” Stevens says. “But yet, Wingman started doing its thing—it started applying the brakes until the driver got close enough and could see, basically, what he would’ve hit at 60 mph.”
IT platforms and systems
A fleet management IT platform can be a foundation for disaster and emergency preparedness. IT systems can help maintain communications with drivers at all times, for example, and help spot and avoid hazards or roadways blocked by traffic.
Fleet Owner spoke with fleet technology company Trimble and two of its subsidiaries, PeopleNet and ALK Technologies Inc., to hear about some ways IT can help empower fleets in emergencies. For instance, PeopleNet’s ConnectedFleet Platform uses a wireless modem to turn trucks into a WiFi hotspot, which then can connect multiple, in-vehicle devices and systems to fleet management personnel in the back office.
But that modem can also maintain communications in situations where phones may fail, notes Tom Dorazio, director of product management at PeopleNet. “We operate on a network that has over 50 carriers based on geographic location,” he says. “If a driver happens to have an AT&T phone and there’s an issue where AT&T service is out, he wouldn’t be able to use his phone.
“But our system’s technology would scan across and look for other carriers in that area that are part of our network to maintain communication,” Dorazio adds. The driver’s phone, tablet or other wireless device could be connected via the PeopleNet system’s WiFi hotspot, he notes, and the modem can also utilize different cellular networks—CDMA and GSM—for more flexibility in connectivity. In areas where cell network coverage doesn’t reach, fleets can equip the system with a satellite modem, which can provide universal coverage.
Notably, avoiding disaster could also require turning off cellular connectivity at critical times, points out Jim Rodi, general manager of Trimble’s North American Oil and Gas Services Div. Trimble’s fleet management suite specifically for oilfield haulers, who operate in places “where work is inherently dangerous,” features a radio frequency suspend feature. Drivers would engage it at an oil well site within a certain radius of where a process called “perforation” is taking place, Rodi says.
“That’s the activity that causes underground explosions, if you will, that allow for the oil to come back up through the pipes,” he explains, and cellular devices can present a hazard within a certain distance. Also, because oilfield haulers may have to work in some remote locations, Trimble’s system incorporates a timer function the driver can set. As it counts down, the timer will blow the truck’s horn as a warning and after that, if not reset, will contact the back office to alert of a possible “man down” situation.
“In the back-office environment, we can provide the best possible route to the dispatcher, taking into consideration traffic and weather if they want.”
- Rishi Mehra, director of web products at ALK.
Technology such as ALK’s PC*Miler back-office routing and distance calculating tool, ALK Maps planning tool that folds in traffic and weather info, and Weather Alerts platform tapping National Weather Service and Environment Canada warnings and information can offer advantages in emergency preparedness as well. “In the back-office environment, we can provide the best possible route to the dispatcher, taking into consideration traffic and weather if they want,” says Rishi Mehra, director of web products at ALK.
“We had the whole closure of a 70-mi. stretch of I-95 in South Carolina,” he recalls, referencing the recent severe flooding in that state. “The minute we were notified of that by the South Carolina [Dept. of Transportation] authorities, we took steps where we updated our back network and introduced an ‘override closure’ on that stretch; anyone running new routes along that was getting notified that this highway was closed.”
But he also points to the company’s CoPilot in-cab navigation system as a particular benefit, since that technology—other than when it’s accessing live traffic information—is self-contained. “The whole application—the logic to route you from Point A to Point B in the safest, legal path—is all on the in-cab device or on your smartphone, including the map data,” Mehra explains.
In an unforeseeable real-life scenario that could affect a fleet—a driver suddenly spots an accident some ways ahead on a highway, for instance—CoPilot can help drivers get to an alternative route. “The driver could say, ‘Okay, I want to be rerouted,’ and CoPilot would display three routes; one is the most optimal, and there would be two alternate routes.
“The driver can visualize all three routes and decide which one to pick,” Mehra continues. On that note, he adds that an important part of emergency preparedness can be using one of the most advanced technologies of all: the human mind.
“There are different ways to approach the whole impact of weather, disaster and emergency situations,” he points out. “One is you can try to make the software intelligent enough to always ‘think’ for people, but based on our interactions with various organizations and fleet managers, they would still like the human brain to be involved in it.”
