Technology

Southeastern Freight Lines opts for COPE model and PeopleNet

Aug. 14, 2013

PeopleNet recently announced that Southeastern Freight Lines (SEFL) is replacing its current technology with PeopleNet’s open platform. SEFL has a number of proprietary applications, many developed in-house, that the company wanted to integrate into a new system. It was the big challenge, the core requirement, according to Mark Kessler, PeopleNet senior vice president.

The fleet was looking for a supplier that could incorporate important legacy applications like their home-grown messaging and dispatch system and driver log program (from ISE) yet still provide an open door to integration going forward, he noted. What to do? The answer was to adopt PeopleNet’s Open Fleet Mobility platform.

“SEFL had two main legacy applications, messaging and dispatch and their driver log program,” recalled Kessler. “Forward-thinking fleets like Southeastern Freight Lines, that want to leverage technology and communications to make their operations as safe, efficient and compliant as possible, are interested in a COPE model (company owned, personally enabled) fleet mobility platform that will take them into the future and enable profitable growth. That is what we did.”

According to Kessler, the decision process for SEFL involved three critical steps: “SEFL spent a week in our offices meeting with our tailored solutions team to see how we could onboard the PeopleNet system,” he told Fleet Owner. “Then PeopleNet flow-charted all their processes to see how we could optimize their ROI [on moving to our system. Finally, our team went to work to develop and test a solution that would meet their needs.]”

To-date SEFL has activated 1,536 units of 2,800 they will have installed when the implementation is complete, according to Kessler. “SEFL is a perfect customer,” he noted. “They will continue to push us to really innovate.

“Our innovative customers drive us to be better,” he told Fleet Owner. “The most interesting thing we do is to sit around with customers and a white board talking about what we can do next, about what is possible. That really gets our juices flowing.”

“PeopleNet’s flexibility has made it very easy to move our extensive collection of in-house applications without major conversion issues,” said Braxton Vick, Southeastern Freight Lines senior vice president of corporate planning and development. “Plus, PeopleNet offers us tremendous expansion opportunities for future applications that will continue to enhance the safety of our drivers’ environment.”

About the Author

Wendy Leavitt

Wendy Leavitt joined Fleet Owner in 1998 after serving as editor-in-chief of Trucking Technology magazine for four years.

She began her career in the trucking industry at Kenworth Truck Company in Kirkland, WA where she spent 16 years—the first five years as safety and compliance manager in the engineering department and more than a decade as the company’s manager of advertising and public relations. She has also worked as a book editor, guided authors through the self-publishing process and operated her own marketing and public relations business.

Wendy has a Masters Degree in English and Art History from Western Washington University, where, as a graduate student, she also taught writing.