Revolutionizing fleet management: How AI integration boosts productivity and safety in transportation

It's nearly impossible to attend a trucking conference or trade show without hearing the terms "artificial intelligence" or "AI."

With trucking technology companies and TMS providers launching a new AI-driven or AI-focused product nearly every week, it's safe to say AI is a major tech trend in the trucking industry. Here is a rundown of some ways telematics companies are leveraging AI to improve their customers' operations.

How are trucking technology companies using AI?

Advancements in trucking tech over the years

Truck drivers and the trucking industry have been at the forefront of technology adoption throughout history, as outlined in a 2020 FleetOwner article. Here’s a look at how far the industry has come throughout the years.

1970s: Truckers begin widely using Citizens Band radios

1980s: Truckers use long-distance pagers as another form of communication

1990s: Trucking companies begin using GPS technology to guide their routes

2000s: Web-based fleet tracking systems enter the market on a massive scale

2010s: ELDs are required in trucking

2020s: The rise of artificial intelligence

At its most recent user conference, McLeod Software announced MPact.Respond_AI, which integrates with users’ email and telematics systems to generate automatic responses to common questions. It’s one way the company helps “automate responses to routine requests that typically are very time-consuming,” Tom McLeod, the company’s founder explained.

“You take the repetitive stuff and automate it,” McLeod said. “That’s the definition of productivity improvement.”

But during a press conference at the event, Tom McLeod also explained that the company will continue relying heavily on its integration partners to bring AI to the forefront because of the broad range of needs throughout its customer base.

“It’s certainly presumptuous for us to think that we'd have everything developed internally—there's just too much development to get done,” McLeod said. “So, it's always been an important part of our strategy to integrate and partner with other suppliers, especially in the transportation industry, where there is such a broad range of applications and a broad requirement for even just different nuances of capability.”

Pulling a needle from a 'haystack of data'

These integration partners include telematics companies that are increasingly using AI to crawl dash cameras and driver-facing camera footage. AI helps identify risky behaviors or instances that need management’s attention instead of having managers review every second of footage to identify these instances on their own.

Many of Samsara’s customers are seeing improvements in safety through its use of AI, Evan Welbourne, Samsara’s VP of machine learning engineering, told FleetOwner. Fleets are using Samsara’s AI technology to “pull the needle from that haystack of data,” he said.

The Samsara camera solution has “a camera that's always running and watching to remind drivers to put on their seat belt; put down their phone; or if they're drowsy, to take a break, et cetera,” Welbourne explained. “That's something that you can only really do with AI. You can't have a human just watching every single driver every minute.”

Isaac Instruments is working on similar AI-driven features for its platform, J.S. Bouchard, Isaac’s chief product officer, said. Eventually, Isaac hopes to use AI to alert fleet managers of drivers who repeatedly display risky behaviors so that managers can prioritize coaching.

While artificial intelligence has been a buzzword for the last several months, it isn’t new.

Though telematics company Geotab hasn’t always used generative AI, it has used artificial intelligence and machine learning for years to help fleets optimize fuel consumption, reduce idle time, and predict upcoming maintenance, Sabina Martin, VP of product management at Geotab, told FleetOwner.

Additionally, Uptake, a predictive maintenance technology platform, has used AI for more than a decade. Uptake uses signal data from fleet assets and trains AI models to make predictions using that data, Uptake CEO Adam McElhinney, told FleetOwner.

“Ten years ago, when we got started, just getting the data from the customers was the big challenge,” McElhinney said. “Now, customers are telling us, ‘Hey, I'm flooded with data, and I need to turn it into actionable insights.’ And you're seeing more and more [assets] become connected.”

Uptake intends to continue using AI to wade through this influx of data and deliver better service to its customers. Uptake has recently improved its offering by using AI to predict tire failure with a six-day lead time and expanding into light-duty tire failure prediction. Before AI, an initiative like this would have required multiple employees to analyze millions of data points.

“The way to think about AI for those use cases is you could conceivably hire a bunch of fleet managers and maintenance experts, and they could manually review all this data,” McElhinney said. “But what you can do with AI is train AI models that replicate what a fleet manager or maintenance expert would do. ... [AI is] reviewing this data, and then turning that into models that [offer insights] automatically in real time for you without having to hire dozens and dozens of fleet managers.”

Data's competitive complement

Successfully implementing AI also requires the capture of high-quality, accurate, and complete data.

Part of having that full data includes things like verbal agreements over the phone, Doug Schrier, McLeod Software’s VP of growth and special projects, said. If no one inputs the verbal information into the virtual AI platform, this could cause fleets to miss opportunities or keep them from meeting customer needs. Therefore, high-quality and complete data is a must for AI implementations.

Uptake’s McElhinney said his customers aren’t coming to Uptake because it uses AI, but “they come to us to solve a problem. ... How we do that behind the scenes is by leveraging these AI models,” he explained.

Though it’s been a hot topic at industry conferences, trade shows, and in the media, trucking tech experts predict that AI is more than just a buzzword.

“I think that the fleets that adopt these technologies are the ones that are going to be able to be competitive with their customers and be able to have good customer service and on-time deliveries,” Geotab’s Martin told FleetOwner.