PC*MILER Product Line
Tri-State Motor Transit Co.
Joplin, Missouri
David Bennett, Executive Vice President
Dave Lambert, Vice President of Compliance and Government Relations
FleetCommander Provides Productivity and Emergency Resources
for Military Explosives Carrier
Tri-State Motor Transit Co. transports some of the most dangerous cargo on earth. The fleet of 330 tractors and 1,400 trailers base in Joplin, Missouri, specializes in hauling for the U.S. Departments of Defense and Energy. Shipments range from combat munitions and explosives to nuclear materials.
“We’ve been a munitions carrier from 1935 on. In 1951 we did weapons-grade nuclear material for the U.S. government. We were the first trucking company to transport nuclear material for the Atomic Energy Commission in 1953,” said David Bennett, executive vice president for Tri-State.
“We’re primarily a government contractor. But we handle freight for a lot of the companies that supply the government. We might do rocket engines. We might do jet engines. We might do parts. We might do electronics for the guidance system, and we transport things like the little air-bag explosive units for automobile manufacturers,”
To maintain security and expedite delivery of such hazardous shipments, Tri-State uses mobile communications from Qualcomm, trailer tracking by SkyBitz and the critical integration and optimization provided by ALK’s PC*MILER | FleetCommander.
FleetCommander visibility software employs the data from those on-board systems to the best possible advantage, displaying truck locations on clear, on-screen maps. Managers can zoom out to display trucks across the country or in a given region. They can zoom in to a particular town or highway. Depending on the update frequency of the onboard devices, FleetCommander can display truck movement in close to real time. The unique visibility provided by FleetCommander is an invaluable tool for secure, safe and efficient fleet operations.
But that’s just for starters. “FleetCommander allows us to geo-fence any city in the country,” said Dave Lambert, Tri-State’s vice president of compliance and government relations. Geo-fencing consists of outlining specific areas on a digital map and providing an alert to management when a truck has cross from a permitted area to one outside the geo-fence.
According to Lambert, managers have used this feature to route drivers around cities hosting political conventions and major sports events -- the Super Bowl for example. They can also use FleetCommander to geo-fence predefined routes. “If they deviate from that route, FleetCommander will advise the driver manager there is a tractor that has deviated x-number of miles from the route,” he explained. Tri-State has provided its own unique twist to geo-fencing in FleetCommander.
“Internally, we have developed the ability to marry SkyBitz and Qualcomm data in FleetCommander. I have a tractor being tracked through one system and a trailer being tracked through another and I can do what we call proximity geo-fencing.
“In other words, the trailer won’t appear attached to the tractor on screen; it will be in the proximity of the tractor. As tractor and trailer move across the country, they will be within a half-inch of each other on screen.”
The differential, Lambert explained, is due to the reporting intervals of the separate systems. “I can bring the response interval of the trailer down to every 3 minutes and the tractor down to every 5 minutes, so you can see there will be a little difference. But I can track that proximity, so if the tractor is 10 miles west and the tractor is 5 miles north, we’ve clearly got a problem.”
FleetCommander serves another purpose for this security-conscious carrier –quick response to emergency situations. “The reason I say that is their basic program was interesting to us, but we needed more than that. They were willing to work with us to modify their system to fit our needs.”
Among the modification ALK provided for Tri-State was the inclusion of 52,000 emergency contact points across the United States. “That information gives us the ability to locate safe havens -- safe refuge locations -- across the country and give proper direction to the driver either electronically or verbally so we can get the unit off the road and into a safe area,” Lambert explained.
Military facilities are among the contacts provided, of course, but Tri-State’s FleetCommander helps deal with more common problems as well. “Let’s say a vehicle has a problem on the road. We can request whatever emergency responder we need. The 52,000 emergency response organizations show up on our FleetCommander map,” Lambert explained.
“If you have a truck on the outskirts of a city, for example, FleetCommander enables you to zero in on the truck. The database will give you the nearest fire, sheriff, ambulance, wrecker service or Highway Patrol office. It will give you a 24-hour phone number if available. It will also give you directions to and from that facility – in map form, not longitude and latitude. It will display miles, street directions and complete addresses.
“It doesn’t matter where in the United States. We can push a button and know exactly the five or six or seven responders right near any given location,” Lambert said. “Also, what if a truck breaks down? That driver manager can go to the system and say ‘give me the closest trucks within 20 miles.’ FleetCommander will automatically pull up every tractor within 20 miles. The manager can then re-power that load and get it to destination,” Lambert said.
Tri-State uses FleetCommander to enable controlled access to customers. According to Lambert, customers can be authorized to view the progress of their loads over the Internet. Secure, password access can be limited to particular vehicles and defined time windows.
For Tri-State, FleetCommander provides fleet visibility, added security and enhanced customer satisfaction. “We have been able to work very well with ALK,” Lambert said.
For more information about PC*MILER|FleetCommander and a brief online
demonstration, please email fcsales@alk.com
or call 800.377.6453, press 1. |
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