An electronic on-board recorder will be required for carriers and drivers who are found to have hours of service (HOS) violations of 10% or more, according to a rule enacted last week by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA.) According to a statement posted on the FMCSA web site, nearly 5,700 carriers will be required to ...

Cargo theft costs between $15 and $30 billion per year in the U.S., and it is increasing. The most popular targets include electronic goods, especially cell phones, but pharmaceuticals and food products are also attractive to thieves. Cargo theft and associated losses have risen by as much as 50% across many load types in the first half of 2009, ...

For the first few years of operation, each of the two dispatchers at Joe Tex Xpress called 25 drivers every morning to locate the fleet’s 50 trucks. Even when every driver answered his cell phone immediately, the check calls would take more than an hour for each dispatcher. “A driver might be on the road or in a situation where he couldn’t ...

We’ve all heard plenty of bad news lately. Declining freight volumes. Trucking company failures. Layoffs. Well, here’s a surprise: Some carriers are doing just fine. In fact, they’re optimistic about the future. These are not just giant carriers, either. Small and mid-size truck lines are also profitable, even in this tough economy. If you’re ...

Just as company trucks approached the mountainous pick-up point for their dedicated haul, High Country Transportation’s drivers typically lost their cell phone service. With no way to reach his drivers at the freight loading area or along parts of the route, Shawn Crowley, High Country’s operations manager, started looking for a satellite-based ...

''Companies that don't use satellites to track trailers? If they have more than 50 trailers, they're probably not competitive any more,'' warned Kevin Slaughter, vice president of Operations for James Brown Trucking in Lithonia, Georgia. ''If you're running 100 trailers you'd better be tracking them...probably six are not producing. Of those ...

As a technologist, I tend to cut through the marketing spin--even our own--and simply look at the facts.  And when you look at all the through conflicting claims around trailer tracking, such as battery life, GPS vs. GLS, and geofencing, just looking at the facts can be a big help. I made a feature-by-feature comparison of our trailer ...

When it comes to satellite truck and trailer tracking, Dave Sward, Vice-President and General Manager of TransCore’s 3sixty Fleet Management service, speaks with facts. Here are a few takeaways from the first two segments of this four-part interview recorded in June 2007.   TransCore’s satellite asset-tracking technology goes back ...