Evolving Trailer Technology

Bull's Eye

Calculating the return on investment in a system or technology may be more of an art than a science. But whether the investment ultimately nets out as a positive, trucking executives should seek to maximize it through planning, a commitment to improving business processes and, where possible, integration with other business systems.

To discover whether an investment offers a return, you first need to know what you want to accomplish. An investment of resources should follow a strategic business plan.

Before the beginning of each year, Greg Gorvin and his managers at Shakopee, Minn.-based Q Carriers conduct a S.W.O.T. analysis, which assesses a company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. In this analysis, Gorvin does not specify the capital expenditures the company will make on technology. Rather, he identifies areas in the business where technology might be needed.

For Ron Have, president of Eagan, Minn.-based Freightmasters Inc., the primary cost justification for a mobile communication system was the time savings in communicating with drivers. “We estimated that an average check call would take a driver 20 minutes,” said Have. “If we could eliminate that twice a day, the savings alone made the difference in cost.” When RFK Transportation Inc. installed a trailer tracking system, the original ROI justification was based on the savings of reducing the number of its trailers, says Robert Kazimour, company president and CEO. As it turned out, the Cedar Rapids, Iowa-based carrier obtained a faster ROI than expected by discovering an additional use for the data terminals. The carrier’s tire pressure monitoring and inflating system was of little use when the trailers were dropped. So RFK’s trailer-tracking vendor wired the tire-monitoring sensor into the data terminal. Now, if a warning is activated, dispatchers are notified immediately via an e-mail that includes the location.