iTECH: Safety Concerns Drive Interest in Truck-Specific GPS
By Dan Leone, Staff Writer
This article appears in the August/September issue of iTECH, published in the Aug. 9 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.
Never mind the deliveries you want to make on time — the deliveries you don’t want to make at all may be the best reasons to invest in a navigation system designed specifically for commercial truck operations.
Take it from Tom Benusa, chief information officer of Transport America. Benusa said that his company decided to test some trucking-specific systems so that drivers would “stop delivering bridges.”
The Eagan, Minn., truckload carrier made two such unscheduled stops last year, crashing into bridges. In one incident, the driver had no electronic Global Positioning System equipment in his cab. Plotting his own course with a paper map, he drove onto a truck-restricted route. In the other, the driver was relying on a personal navigation device that any consumer could pluck from a store’s shelf. Neither driver nor device realized the peril that lay along the programmed route: the driver did not realize it until it was too late, the device not at all. Its maps were intended for automobiles, not trucks.
Such crashes are examples of the obvious danger that arises when big-rig drivers depend on consumer GPS products: Truckers wind up traversing roads that aren’t safe for trucks.
Last year, two New York politicians thought about codifying that danger.
Alarmed by recurring confrontations between trucks and bridges on New York roads, Gov. David Paterson (D) and former Westchester County Executive Andrew Spano said they would draw up a bill to require truckers operating in the state to use navigation programs created specifically for only big-rig routing.
The two lawmakers did not intend to force a navigation device into every truck cab in New York. Rather, their plan was to forbid truckers from using devices designed for the common motorist.
The New York State Motor Truck Association and American Trucking Associations told iTECH that the proposed legislation had yet to materialize as of mid-July. It’s unclear that it will, given that voters tossed Spano out of office in November and that Paterson, who is completing the term of former governor Eliot Spitzer, does not plan to run for the office.
The lawmakers’ concern, however, illustrates why your choice of how to get your GPS directions can have trailer-peeling consequences.
Personal navigation devices powered by GPS are as easy to come by as a cup of coffee. In many stores, including some truck stops, you can pick up both amateur and professional versions over the same counter.
Automotive navigation technology has proliferated widely in recent years, but while every big box retailer in the country is serving up a smorgasbord of PNDs for car drivers, models ready for trucking use out of the box are few.
Market intelligence firm ABI Research still was crunching the numbers for 2009, but the New York-based group said 67 million automotive navigation devices were shipped worldwide in 2008.
ABI researcher Dominique Bonte figures that every truck-specific device in North America would barely register as a drop in that bucket.
“It’s an emerging category,” Bonte told iTECH.
Alan Kornhauser, founder of ALK Technologies, said that perhaps 10% to 20% of U.S. truck drivers use some sort of personal GPS.
ALK, Princeton, N.J., is one of the few suppliers that have designed navigation software expressly for commercial truck movement in the United States for the U.S. trucking industry. Others include Cobra Electronics Corp., Chicago; Garmin Ltd., Olathe, Kan.; and Rand McNally, Skokie, Ill.
All of these manufacturers offer devices with truck-specific mapping software. Except for ALK, which generates its own digital maps and database of truck restrictions, every manufacturer listed here relies on Nokia subsidiary Navteq for mapping data.
To prepare a solid database of truck-navigable roadways, Navteq did exactly what it expects it customers in the trucking industry to do: drive down every inch of passable roadway while paying very, very close attention.
“Our key to building the map database is driving the roads,” said Roy Kolstad, vice president, enterprise Americas, for Navteq. The company’s roster of on-road data collection technology includes panoramic cameras, GPS positioning gear, contour-mapping lasers and, for good measure, “an extensive network of local experts.”
These tools help Navteq “enhance the efficiency and speed with which we can integrate . . . physical and legal restrictions, such as bridge heights, into the Navteq database,” Kolstad said.
PNDs are mostly marketed to owner-operators and small fleets — truck operators that may not be able to afford the robust, mobile communications systems that have played host to truck-specific navigation systems since before there was a PND market.
For fleets that can afford top-of-the-line mobile communications systems, and the in-cab computers on which such systems typically run, truck-specific navigation is fairly easy to come by.
Major mobile communications providers such as PeopleNet, Qualcomm Inc. and Xata Corp. all offer out-of-the-box integrations to navigation software packages designed from the ground up to accommodate big trucks.
Transport America, at the time of this writing, was in the process of installing Qualcomm’s MCP200 Series mobile computer, which supports Maptuit Corp.’s NaviGo software.
Transport America had a few reasons for going with Qualcomm — not the least of which was that the system wears other hats besides “navigation and routing” — but the big one was uniformity throughout the fleet.
After Transport America finished its GPS trial, but before it began installing its Qualcomm systems, Benusa said that some company drivers — the ones who took a shine to automated navigation — asked his opinion on which personal navigation device to purchase in the interim period.
Benusa didn’t want them to purchase any, because Transport America had to be sure “that drivers wouldn’t all go out and buy different things,” he told iTECH.
In particular, the fleet wanted to make sure that no Transport America driver ended up with navigation software tuned for a four-wheeler.
Benusa was quick to point out that none of the truck-specific devices Transport America tested was perfect.
Like navigation systems designed for smaller vehicles, truck navigation systems route drivers to a single pinpoint on a digital map. That pinpoint is not necessarily located at a building’s delivery entrance.
“You still need your last-mile directions” from a human being who has driven them before, Benusa said.
