Previously in this series: Covering your tracks: The brave new world of ‘freight visibility’
In April, owner-operator Rob Hallahan, based in La Crosse, Wisconsin, sold his “Big Orange” 2006 Kenworth W9 to a fellow owner-operator and invested further in the relationship by leasing the truck and its new owner under his authority. Hallahan bought, in turn, the pictured 2019 Kenworth W900L.
Hallahan still opposes being required to use ELDs. He’s more ambivalent about the technology, in part for the tracking capabilities the KeepTruckin ELD and simple small fleet management software have given him in his new role as manager of a fleet that includes his truck and four others.
In October, as Hurricane Michael bore down on the Florida Panhandle, Hallahan was at home in La Crosse, looking at his computer’s KeepTruckin display of his owner-operators’ locations. One was on his way to deliver in Ocala, Florida, “straight into the hurricane,” Hallahan said.
The driver’s cell signal was down, but the KeepTruckin ELD unit remained connected. “The broker wanted to know where he was and if he was going to make it. I could pinpoint exactly where he was, and I would never have been able to do that before.”
Colorado-based small fleet owner-operator Wade Spencer also has found tracking benefits from in-cab GPS. It hasn’t been directly via the Blue Ink Technology ELDs he’s using for his four-truck company but through Fleetmatics trackers he’d installed previously, in part to enable location sharing with a regular broker customer who’d requested it.
Spencer set the Fleetmatics devices to send daily “driver locations at 6 a.m. and again at 6 p.m.” to the broker. On the rare high-value load, an occasion when his broker may need to know more, Spencer says, “I’ve given her login access” to his administrator account.
