Routing in real time

It’s the ever-present nightmare of any operations manager in the trucking business. In the blink of an eye, any number of unexpected factors—traffic conges­tion, bad weather, vehicle breakdowns, even delays at the weigh station—wreck load plans and throw on-time delivery schedules out the window.

But what if technology—com­bining everything GPS location data can offer, weather forecasts, highway maps, and even up-to-the-minute traffic flow information— could quickly step into such messes, re-plot routes and quickly get ship­ments back on track? Can such sys­tems do this consistently and smoothly over and over again?

That’s the ultimate promise of real-time routing, one that technology providers, trucking firms, and even shippers are trying hard to achieve.

“Real-time routing is the ability of technology to take into consideration the assigned truck route combined with the cur­rent location of the vehicle,” explains Adam Kahn, director of marketing for Omnitracs (formally Qualcomm). “It enables a three-way conversation between the shipper, the driver and the customer—all working together to get the designated freight to the location at the right time and as safely as possible.”

With today’s technology, Kahn says fleets can view a truck’s progress against its route and assess whether the truck will arrive at a location on time based on vehicle data. “Fleets typically review traffic, driver feed­back, and construction delays and now more than ever available driving hours. They have the ability to reca­librate arrival times, reroute the vehicle based on location, and also communicate changes of plans with customers,” he notes.

“In the case of delays, fleets can reroute another vehicle or update arrival times, with fleets also taking advantage of real-time routing with basic mobile computing technology and GPS,” Kahn says. “By also incorporating truck navi­gation and integration into driver dispatch, fleets large and small as well as shippers gain an even deeper view into the supply chain.”

Christian Schenk, senior vice president of product and market strategy for XRS, points out that the major benefit real-time routing provides is the “further optimization” of current-day activities based on unplanned or unforeseen circumstances.

“Take, for example, a last-minute order that comes into a food distribution company, which has extra product on the truck and could fulfill [that order] same-day versus planning for another day,” he says. “That means there’s more revenue for the trucking company or the private fleet, so both small and large fleets can benefit from it.”

HAPPENING NOW

This use of real-time routing is already taking place in high-volume industries like package delivery, Schenk adds. Leading courier com­panies are able to change service levels and delivery dates dynamically while a package is still in transit, allowing users to log in via the Internet and track the location of their package at any time in the shipping process.

“Trucking is a couple of years behind where small-pack­age delivery is, but only based on the volume and cost that it takes to deploy,” he stresses. “The large barriers to entry will be on the ownership from end to end of the supply chain. End-to-end transparency on the supply chain is not where it needs to be yet for real-time routing to be mainstream in trucking, but advancements in technology will drive costs down and make it available to more firms in more industries.”

Erin Cave, director of product management, Naviga­tion, at Telogis, points out that real-time routing won’t be just a “nice to have” technology extra for trucking, either. “Real-time routing is a necessity in order to keep up with the demands of this fast-paced environment, and it’s defi­nitely an evolving, global phenomenon,” Cave says. “Espe­cially in an enterprise environment, companies need to be able to route more efficiently in order to meet the changing needs of their own customers.”

There’s a “self-interest” aspect to real-time routing as well. The ability to receive road condition status from driv­ers and vehicles not only impacts routing immediately, it also makes carriers more efficient and ultimately increases safety not only for commercial drivers but also for everyone else on the road, Cave notes.

“This type of real-time routing isn’t futuristic; it’s hap­pening now and it’s happening pretty much everywhere commercial vehicles are,” Cave stresses. “Fleets are taking advantage and benefiting from it on a daily basis.”

Those benefits, in many cases, can be tied into increasing the effectiveness of trucking assets, whether they serve in the for-hire or private fleet environment.

James Mourafetis, vice president, and Uday Kamat, direc­tor, of consulting firm Argo, argued in a recent white paper that improving the asset effectiveness index, or AEI, of a private fleet can contribute far more to top-line revenue growth for a company versus improvements to maintenance procedures.

“Manufacturers and distributors tend to view private fleets as a necessary cost, a cost that’s continually rising due to higher fuel prices, competition for drivers and stiffer regulations,” they point out. “But by taking a big-picture perspective—by leveraging trucks as revenue capacity gen­erators through overall network optimization—a necessary cost can instead become a contributor to the top line.”

MORE WITH LESS

Mourafetis and Kamat say that AEI is a metric that reflects the percentage of time trucks spend doing what they’re supposed to, which, in the case of a private fleet, is typically the delivery of goods. Thus, real-time routing can help improve a fleet’s AEI by boosting net­work optimization.

“The key is to increase AEI by decreasing the amount of time trucks spend empty, idling or sitting in mainte­nance,” they argue. “The end result? Fewer trucks and/or facilities [will be] needed to perform the same or even greater amounts of work, contributing to greater margin capacity and allowing the firm to offset major capital expenses. And as the percent of time that trucks spend delivering goods increases, the need to have as many trucks decreases. This allows fleets to handle increases in demand, resulting in more revenue without spending money on more trucks.”

The ability to efficiently and effectively handle more business from customers is perhaps the biggest monetary opportunity offered by real-time routing systems, says Ashley Jones, director of marketing for NexTraq.

“Being more efficient and nimble definitely makes them [trucking companies] more proactive with shippers,” Jones points out. “Changes in schedules can be quickly handled [while] fleets also maximize their assets. Which trucks can take on another pickup? Is the driver taking the most ef­ficient route? All of these questions can be answered with a fleet tracking solution making the back-office people more aware of situations on a daily and weekly basis in real time.”

Rick Ochsendorf, senior vice president-operations for PeopleNet, also stresses that there can be safety as well as driver retention benefits to real-time routing systems.

“Many accidents are [a result of] drivers distracted by looking for road signs and/or trying to read directions from papers or maps,” he notes. “[Real-time routing] is a nice driver retention tool as well as helping to make the driver’s work life better by not having to worry about finding directions to loca­tions and/or having to pay for their own navigation solution.”

PeopleNet breaks down the potential trucking benefits of real-time routing into several diverse brackets, including:

- Reducing the number of incidents and accidents. 

- Reducing out-of-route miles—greater than 10% by many fleets.

- Increasing driver satisfaction and retention.

- More efficient dispatching, as in the past, dispatch­ers often spent many hours finding and relaying directions manually.

- More accurate travel time projections.

- Real-time load status updates for customers with ETA projections.

- More revenue by getting loaded and unloaded on time, with better visibility to shippers and receivers.

- Less fuel consumption by taking the most effective route.

GAME-CHANGER

Ochsendorf goes on to add that greater than 40% of PeopleNet’s customer base uses in-cab navigation, a number that is growing rapidly, he points out, so the basic tenets of real-time routing are already very well ac­cepted. “We are at the point where truck­ing companies are realizing the power of real-time routing and navigation and how it can be a game-changer for the industry,” he explains.

Yet reaching that point does re­quire the successful navigation of some technological complexity to a degree, cautions Omnitrac’s Kahn. From his firm’s perspective, Kahn argues that there are three levels of complexity where real-time routing systems are concerned.

“The easiest entry point is to incorporate vehicle location and an ability to communicate with dispatch,” he says. “Within this scenario, vehicle location can be computed based on speed, travel time, and mileage—with fleets able to compute ETA (estimated time of arrival). Based on this information, there may be an alternative route suggested to meet delivery windows. In some cases, fleets make the decision to reroute the original vehicle or send another vehicle as a replacement to meet the customer’s service needs.”

The second or more integrated approach would be to include truck-route based navigation, through which new directions can be sent to the truck to dynamically improve its route and expected delivery time, Kahn notes.

Fleets might also include other third-party data feeds into their planning and rerouting algorithms, such as his­torical traffic trends, real-time traffic indicators, weather patterns, planned construction projects, and traffic accident avoidance.

Kahn believes two types of real-time routing scenarios are starting to take shape; one revolves around national trans­portation networks and the other concerns metropolitan transportation. “In each case, regardless of the length of trip, fleet managers are constantly looking at exceptions to their plan to determine which vehicle is running behind and assess how they can alter that vehicle’s path to meet the customer’s delivery window,” he says.

“The difference between a national and metropolitan real-time footprint is the frequency of unexpected route delays,” Kahn notes. “Within the metropolitan footprint, there are typically more incidents that may happen, all with­in a smaller area with a much greater number of alternative routes. While there may be fewer incidents within the na­tional footprint, there are also fewer alternatives to consider when considering an alternative plan.”

PRE-PLANNING

The key for trucking when it comes to real-time routing needs, though, is improving upon a fleet’s ability to meet delivery obli­gations, he says.

“Trucking companies relied on ‘check-calls’ from drivers for years, but historically, this has been somewhat problematic as the calculated locations of the vehicle might not match up with the actual location of the vehicle,” Kahn explains.

“As fleets continue to invest in technology that enables real-time routing, they not only have the ability to manage fleets during their route, but they now have the ability to pre-plan and manage their truck while en route—all while analyzing routes for trends,” he continues.

Factors Kahn thinks could prove valuable on the pre-planning side of the route ledger in­clude traffic patterns, weather, fuel purchase location, and available driv­ing hours. Yet factors real-time rout­ing could help mitigate include traf­fic accidents, unplanned driver delays, and inaccurate driving directions.

Finally, trucking firms can cap­ture data via real-time routing tech­nology. Data such as actual driving time, reported traffic, customer detention, fueling issues, and driver feedback on the actual time of the route can help trucking firms evaluate routes to improve future planning.

XRS’s Schenk argues, however, that real-time routing strategies will be largely useless unless they lead to behav­ior changes while the truck is in motion or at the delivery/pickup site.

“We want the adoption of electronic onboard tools to be easy on the driver—and that efficiency extends to routing and dispatch features accessible from the cab,” he says. “We know drivers don’t need another distraction or time-consuming administrative function. That’s why mobile devices, specifically smartphones and tablets, can make it easy and inexpensive for drivers to communicate efficiently with dispatchers and make the most of their hours on the road.”

In the final analysis, Pete Allen, CEO of Cadec, notes that while any technology that can help trucking become more efficient can be a game-changer, it is especially true of real-time routing systems if fleets seek to maximize the benefits such technology can offer.

“To be able to better serve their customers and to be able to do it more efficiently allows trucking companies to haul more products, earn more revenue, and provide better guidance as to ETA so the customers are better informed,” he says. “Leading trucking companies are there today with real-time routing, and many are following.”