Fleet Management: The Future of IoT for Fleets

Fleet management uses IoT devices to track cargo and vehicles.The days of managing a fleet with nightly phone calls and a paper map on a wall are long gone. More recently, even phone calls from the drivers and the loading docks to let the manager know where everything is has fallen away.

Today, fleet management can be automated to an amazing extent, and the people who are innovating IoT fleet management have only just begun.

What will fleet management look like soon?

The most obvious place that fleet management will change is with a complete lack of drivers. Soon, self-driving trucks will take to the roads on a large scale. For the shipping industry, it won’t be soon enough. There aren’t nearly enough drivers to deliver everything the world needs. 

Driverless Trucks

Using sensors, GPS, lasers, sonar, and much more, driverless trucks will travel the world’s highways, not needing sleep, not having to stop for restroom breaks. Never calling in sick.

Maintenance and Fleet Management

Maintenance will be something that can be handled more simply. Vehicles, including trailers, will communicate the number of miles or kilometers traveled. They will set their own maintenance appointments at the nearest stop or garage. If something is not right, like tires are low on air or there’s a problem with the engine, sensors will notify the fleet manager who can plan to get everything fixed. 

Underutilized Resources

Shared vehicles are another place where IoT can help. While the trucking industry is resistant to this change, it’s probably going to happen simply because it’s more cost-effective. Having a truck sit for days in front of a driver’s house or in a lot is a wasted resource. Because the IoT sensors can tell the owners where the vehicle is, track its progress, and help to ensure that the vehicle arrives where the next driver needs it, sharing will increase the overall system efficiency.

Pinpointing underutilized resources is another place where IoT devices can be of amazing use. For example, an underutilized truck is driven for less than 5,000 miles or 500 engine hours in a year. There are tens of thousands of these vehicles, but they hide in plain sight, are overlooked, and cost money. By finding these trucks. Companies can increase their efficiency, especially if they’re sharing their resources with other trucking companies.  

Fuel Efficiency and Fleet Management

Fuel efficiency is a place where IoT sensors are already making changes. By helping drivers deliver better acceleration and braking habits, companies can improve fuel consumption by up to 10%. Using IoT sensors and cameras, drivers can be coached on how to drive in ways that will save a lot of fuel in a short time. 

Improving fuel efficiency will also make driving greener. When consumers look at places where there’s a lot of air pollution, they see semis belching black smoke into the sky. IoT sensors can help the driver to operate more efficiently, but can also notify the fleet manager that something isn’t running optimally. They can have corrections made to help make the truck operate more efficiently and cleaner. This will also allow the company to prove to consumers and regulators that they’re more efficient and less dirty. Massive increases in efficiency are sometimes rewarded with grants and tax credits. 

Traffic and Cargo Insight

Traffic and cargo flow insights will help managers to move goods more efficiently. Whereas the last ten feet of a truck might not be being used at this time, sensors that let the managers know that a) there’s space on a truck, b) that there’s a shipment nearby that will fit in that space, and c) that the cargo is going someplace close to the trucks expected route, loads can move more quickly and efficiency is increased exponentially. This type of analysis by hand is nearly impossible, but for a computer with all the data and nearly infinite calculating abilities, it’s not hard at all. 

Automated recoveries will be the standard. If a vehicle breaks down, it will send a message to the central management system. Those systems will automatically contact a repair company or a tow truck, dispatch another driver, and notify the customer and the fleet manager of a possible delay.

Customer Service

Customer service will improve as companies will be able to tell customers exactly where their cargo is at all times. Just like today when you’re waiting for an Amazon package, you get updates as to exactly where it is. With IoT sensors tied to a customer service system, customers can be told exactly where their shipment is, when it’s expected, and that it’s in motion. As customers learn to expect this from Amazon and the United States Postal Service, they’ll expect it from their shopping companies as well. 

Autoloading

Autoloading at the dock will move quicker than loading happens now. Machines can sense everything around them. They have no blind spots. They can also communicate with each other “psychically” letting one machine know exactly where all the other machines on the loading dock are at any moment. Since they know this information, they can move faster and more efficiently than even the best human team.

Automated Fleet Management

As time passes, we’re going to see the entire shipping industry automation, from the fleet of trucks filled with IoT sensors to container ships crossing oceans without any crews, steering themselves right up to the dock. Once there, automated forklifts and cranes will remove the cargo, load it onto automated trains and trucks. 

The future of fleet management with IoT is bright. It might represent a massive cultural shift for more fleet managers, but it will make the whole system faster, more efficient, and less expensive in the long run.

Be sure to read our recent blog, “Fleet Trends in 2022: The Good, the Bad, and the Inconclusive.”