2024 was a big year for technology in the trucking industry, evident by the fact that trucking trade shows are turning into technology trade shows, autonomous vehicles are showing progress, and artificial intelligence has crept its way into everyday trucking operations.
FleetOwner’s top 10 technology stories are a perfect reflection of how different technologies have impacted the industry throughout the year.
10. Refrigerated fleet grows with Samsara tech
CHICAGO—Since 2021, Farmer’s Fridge, a company that makes and distributes healthy food for refrigerated vending machines, has doubled its fleet each year. During a tour of the company’s headquarters during the Samsara Beyond user conference, Farmer’s Fridge credited Samsara technology for much of its fleet’s growth.
“We make all the food in this fridge and every fridge you may have seen across the country,” said Luke Saunders, CEO of Farmer’s Fridge, during the tour. “We operate about 1,500 locations across 25 markets in the U.S. …We have 125 drivers on the road that do the last-mile delivery to every fridge of those 1,500 fridges and another like 600 or so retail stores." Read more…
9. A focused passion and investment in technology help this fleet succeed
With a stack of more than 10,000 driver applications, Reliable Carriers must be doing something right. While the auto hauling company gets a lot of attention from its YouTube channel hauling luxury and one-of-one vehicles to private owners, Reliable Carriers’ breadth of vehicle hauling is vast. From transporting vehicles to auto shows to transporting clay models for OEMs to being the exclusive transporter for auto auction houses, saying the company has made a name for itself in the auto-hauling industry is a bit of an understatement.
But a success story of this magnitude takes time to write. Read more…
8. Trucking technology companies’ legal battle heats up
Trucking technology company Samsara first sued its competitor Motive in January 2024. Since then, the legal battle has gotten hotter. Motive dropped a countersuit shortly after. Each company developed a webpage highlighting details of their platform and a timeline of the competitor’s alleged copycat behavior. Within the year, headlines from both companies touted small wins and poked jabs. It’s a story that FleetOwner continues to watch.
Coverage of Motive’s countersuit took the spot for eighth-most page views in FleetOwner’s technology stories of 2024, but we’ve listed all FleetOwner coverage of the legal battle below:
7. CES 2024: The future is almost here for latest truck technology
LAS VEGAS—More trucks and trucking technology might be displayed here at the Consumer Electronic Show than ever before. While trucking is still a small subset of the thousands of exhibitors who’ve descended upon this desert oasis, you can’t miss the growing commercial vehicle presence here.
With a big focus on autonomous driving, Kodiak Robotics, Aurora Innovation, Torc Robotics, and Gatik AI all came to CES 2024, along with up to 300,000 attendees, to show off new developments and partnerships at the Las Vegas Convention Center and up and down the Vegas Strip. Read more…
6. Trucking’s ‘driverless era’ revs up
A “new driverless era for the autonomous trucking industry” has begun.
That is how Don Burnette, Kodiak Robotics founder and chief executive, described the initial 21-mile runs of frac sand by Kodiak-equipped Class 8 trucks with no human driver. The first driverless hauls were completed on private leased roads for Atlas Energy Solutions in Texas and New Mexico. Read more…
5. Beyond fault codes: Modern remote diagnostics
Telematics provides fleets and shops with a wealth of information, from engine health to efficiency and performance metrics, though not every employee knows how to cash in on the information age’s oft-misunderstood digital currency.
They likely get that fault codes, for example, indicate a problem on a truck, but is it minor or major, and will it impact the business, or is it more technological white noise? Read more…
4. Trucking’s two biggest cybersecurity threats today
Interconnected technologies are an increasingly necessary part of the trucking industry’s operations. With this rise in technologies comes an increased risk of cyberattacks.
The two most prominent forms of access for cyberattacks in trucking today are phishing and API vulnerabilities, according to the report “2024 Trucking Cybersecurity Trends” by the National Motor Freight Traffic Association. Read more…
3. How fleets are leveraging AI to boost operations
Trucking is in its advanced software era. Transportation management system providers that once held a small footprint at trade shows now take up half of the show floor. These days, it’s hard to find a fleet that doesn’t rely on some form of TMS or advanced computing software.
This rapid acceleration of trucking management technology has brought along trending features and tools with each new year, such as asset tracking, predictive maintenance monitoring, and in-cab driver coaching. One of the most recent tech trends is artificial intelligence. Read more…
2. How fleet leaders are embracing AI, and what’s holding them back
What are fleet leaders saying about artificial intelligence integrations within their operations? Are any fleets currently experimenting with AI, and if so, where? These are all questions Samsara, a physical operations technology company, sought to answer from a survey for its latest State of Connected Operations Report.
More than 1,550 fleet leaders were surveyed across seven countries to understand where the industry stands with AI integrations. The results were compiled into Samsara’s report, Smarter, Faster, Safer: The AI Revolution in Physical Operations. The leaders surveyed by Samsara consisted of executives and directors of physical operations companies with 150 vehicles or more. Read more…
1. Protect your fleet from cyber risks
As the world becomes more connected, cybersecurity risks become more prominent. Cyber threats stretch across multiple industries, and the trucking industry isn’t immune. Fleet owners and operators should take steps today to fortify their fleets and protect themselves against cyberattacks.
Last September, Estes Express Lines fell victim to a ransomware attack that blocked user access to their data or systems until a ransom was paid. Estes truck drivers were unable to electronically log their hours of service. While the company hired an external cybersecurity team, the ransomware attack took three weeks to resolve. According to the Maine Attorney General’s Office where the data breach notification was filed, the incident impacted more than 21,000 individuals. And that was just one incident. Read more…
Along with these articles, FleetOwner publishes several popular annual features that garner attention throughout the trucking and transportation industries. These include our annual looks at the largest commercial transportation systems in the U.S., the FleetOwner 500: For-Hire and FleetOwner 500: Private Fleets.
Our annual profiles of women in the industry, Women in Transportation 2024, were published this summer. Each year, FleetOwner recognizes the transportation operations of private fleets with the FleetOwner Private Fleet of the Year award. This fall, we expanded and rebranded our annual New Models to the 2025 FleetOwner vehicle guide, our largest-ever look at the next generation of heavy-duty, medium-duty, light-duty, and alternative-powered trucks and vans.
We put a bow on the year with the 2024 Trucking by the Numbers feature, an info-graphical look at the facts and figures that make up the trucking and transportation industries. To view what's ahead for FleetOwner in the new year, please check out our 2025 Media Kit.
