Rollin' 18 Podcast

Harnessing AI in Trucking: Enhancing Road Safety, Driver Support, and Fleet Efficiency

• Walter Gatlin • Season 1 • Episode 30

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Ever wondered how artificial intelligence is reshaping the trucking industry? Join me, Walter Gatlin, on this episode of Rollin' 18 Podcast, where we promise you'll discover how AI is revolutionizing road safety, driver support, and efficiency in the face of modern-day pressures. As the backbone of America's supply chain faces increased demands from dispatchers and electronic logging devices, we highlight the importance of drivers maintaining control as the true captains of their ships, making responsible decisions for their safety and the safety of others on the road.

Dive deeper into how AI is being practically implemented within the industry, from driver and customer support to freight tracking and monitoring driver alertness. We weigh the benefits and challenges of AI adoption, emphasizing how automation can help drivers focus on driving by managing ancillary tasks. Plus, we discuss the evolving landscape of technology pilots that make it easier for fleets to test and deploy new innovations. Don't miss our crucial safety recall update for certain Peterbilt and Kenworth trucks due to a serious steering issue—your safety depends on it. Tune in for a comprehensive discussion blending safety, technology, and critical industry updates to keep you informed and prepared.

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How in-cab AI is transforming the trucking industry.
https://www.ccjdigital.com

Smart Trucking.
https://www.smart-trucking.com/

Email me anytime with news, suggestions, and stories at rollin18podcast@gmail.com. God bless, be safe, and keep it between the lines drivers.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Rollin' 18 Podcast. This 40-year veteran is here for anyone wanting to stay up to date with the trucking world. Grab your coffee, hop on board and let's get on down the road with Walter Gatlin.

Speaker 2:

Hello drivers, I hope all of you folks out there are doing good. Out there on the big road and the small roads and everywhere in between, you guys are driving them big old trucks. I want to remind you guys that you know, a few episodes ago I did a story about you being the captain of your ship and here's part of what I said. And I got the idea reading a story from smart trucking. Check this. This is what I said, a short reminder to you drivers out there that when you're out there driving that truck, that is your ship.

Speaker 2:

I went to smart trucking and I was kind of browsing through the facebook pages and I seen a question pop up with a truck in the snow and ice, would you drive in any weather conditions if your dispatcher insisted, and my comment right off the bat was whether I was an owner operator or I worked for a company. They all understood one thing I am the captain of my ship. It gets steered only by me. If they don't like my decisions, they are more than welcome to fire me. A truck driver may be a dime a dozen. Now it seems like Dave and I, dave from Smart Trucking, are on the same page, because 17 hours ago he put out a video about you taking care of your truck, taking care of your load, driving responsibly. Here's what Dave said, and this was 17 hours ago. He posted a video of him saying this the dude is spot on and he's a 40-plus year driver like me. Check this out.

Speaker 3:

When the ELD says go, you can still say no. Elds were invented and intended as a safety tool, but the carriers twisted that and made them an efficiency tool and that was not their intended purpose. So when the eld says you've got enough hours in at 2 am, you can go and the dispatch says you've got enough hours in and you can go, it doesn't mean you should go, because most people are still tired at 2 am. So you're going to look like a hero for five minutes if you make that 4 am delivery. But you're going to look like a hero for five minutes if you make that 4 am delivery. But you're going to look like a fool for life if you roll the thing at 4 am, put it on its side of the median strip and blow all the freight out through the roof. Remember you are the captain of the ship. Your safety and the safety of others around you is your responsibility.

Speaker 2:

Now we don't say those things, just to use the words. Captain of the ship, you're literally in control of 40 tons, 80,000-pound vehicle going down the road. Sometimes it speeds of 70, 80, even 90 miles an hour, depending on what type of truck you have. We all know this to be true. And we look cool the faster we go and things like that. But I've always advocated staying slow in the city, staying in the right lane. You're going to make just as much time. Get over there, get out of everybody's way. Let them do the bumper car thing. You don't need to get involved with that. When you get out in the wide, open road, that's when you can put the hammer down. If you have a hammer, that is. But regardless of whether you have a hammer or not, we're all to be respected, we're all to be taken care of, but we also need to take care of each other, and that includes watching what you do. The ELD remark is very important because sometimes the ELD can put you in a position to where you're much less safe by following its rules than you are by following your own. Dot knows this to be a fact and I don't know why they don't deal with it.

Speaker 2:

Now today's story is going to be about AI, and this is a touchy situation, because a lot of people approve of AI. A lot of people disapprove. I use AI for my podcast. I don't use it for my voice. I don't use it for any of my editing, anything like that. I do all that stuff on my own. I'm not a very good writer, though, so AI will listen to the entire conversation on my you know, 14, 15 minute podcast and it will write me a full description. I'll have to read it because it does make errors every once in a while, but it will write me a full description. It will be my writer, which is great, because if I had to pay a writer on Fiverr, it would cost me a fortune. If I had to sit down and write the stuff myself, it would take me forever, because I'm not a brilliant guy. I'm great at driving truck. I was horrible in school. That's just the way some of us are, so we have to accept that.

Speaker 2:

But AI is now being integrated into the commercial trucking business business, and I come across a story which I'm going to put a link down below, and I'm also going to put another link back down to smart trucking, because I think it is very valuable to have Dave's information and what smart trucking does in order to you know. Catch up on some reading when you got some downtime. Check out their videos, check out their their articles. It's very helpful whether you're a newbie or whether you're a veteran. Everybody in between can benefit from this stuff.

Speaker 2:

Now the story that I read is how ncab ai is transforming the trucking industry. It says here. In 2015, freightliner rolled out the first licensed autonomous commercial truck to operate on an open public highway in the US. Now that was 2015. Driving it across the Hoover Dam, autonomous vehicles were all the hype, while the hype of AVs has died down a bit as the industry continues to work out all the kinks with the batteries and everything and with deploying the technology. Artificial intelligence has become all the rage and fleets are dipping their toes into the water. Now it says here, telematics and fleet management tools provider Platform Science have been working up with large carriers like Schneider, us Express and Walmart as they've tested out the AI space, and chief technology officer and co-founder Jake Fields said smaller fleets should sit back and let the big companies work things out, because I think that's exactly what needs to be done.

Speaker 2:

Ai is going to be a very useful tool, but it's also going to be a tool for nefarious people. We know that. It's going to be used by people to scam you out of your money. It's going to be used by people to put together pornography of certain sorts child pornography, regular pornography, taking regular pictures off of people's profiles, making them look naked, making them look like they're having you know sex on video and stuff like. It's going to be a horrific situation and I hope the law is very stringent and strict on these folks. I hope when they catch them, they stick them in the deepest, darkest dungeons in the world and let them rot until they die and go to hell, because, ladies and gentlemen, we don't need any of our children, our mothers, our fathers, anybody like that, to fall victim to such nasty and decrepit. To me, it is the most psychotic thing a human being can do and, as far as I'm concerned, they don't need to be on this planet.

Speaker 2:

Now back to ai. Nobody needs to innovate day one on AI, it says, and being a fast follower has lots of value to it, versus making expensive investments into things that are quite speculative, he said during McLeod Software recent AI conference don't get too caught up in the hype, because we're going to be living in it for a long time. So AI is definitely here to stay and the one thing we have to realize it is brand new, and if you jump into it too far, too deep and put too much money into it and then all of a sudden it changes course, it may not fit your needs. It may end up in a closet somewhere and all that money gone for no reason. Now many fleets with dash cameras aren't strangers to AI. Several providers offer cameras that use AI to track eye movement, for example, to determine if a driver is drowsy and alert them. There's AI around gathering data for predictive maintenance as well, but those are third-party solutions.

Speaker 2:

Now some fleets have begun directly experimenting with AI, implementing simple chatbots for things like driver and customer support by using a large language model to parse its own data for track responses to common questions. And AI can be used right away for certain things like tracking, you know, freight and things like that and making sure the driver is awake. But you don't want to use it for complex things such as driving a truck until we know for a fact it has all the bugs worked out of it. Mr Fields said this is an easy way for fleets to get started, but he warned that they should be prepared for complaints and driver frustration because the technology is new and imperfect. The value extends beyond reducing back office tasks, he said. I think one of the more valuable learnings from that approach is that we're seeing from fleets testing that out of the volume and the types of questions they're getting back, questions they didn't really realize the driver had or that were getting lost with the driver manager, so they can really understand their driver's needs a little bit better and then expand on that.

Speaker 2:

Now I don't know how you guys feel. You can comment to me or you can text me, or however you want to get a hold of me. Let me know what you think about AI. Let me know if you know of something AI can do that most people haven't even thought of yet. There are some very smart people out there, including truck drivers, who come up with things in their head, have this great, awesome idea for AI in order to better the trucking industry and haven't said anything because they just didn't think of it. But hey, if you come up with a great idea via AI, let somebody know and you can also copyright that information before you spill the beans. That way it's protected and whether it goes anywhere or not is irrelevant. The more information that we can come up with to keep AI at bay and let AI do what it's supposed to do and not allow it to do things that are nefarious. That's where we need to be.

Speaker 2:

The core goal, from anybody's view, is let drivers drive. A lot of tasks have been added to the driver's day, so to the extent that those can get automated whether it's AI or just software integration that offers a ton of value for them. Just keeping an eye out for those opportunities and, one by one, picking those off. Being steady on how we choose to use AI or any other software implementation in order to help the driver, help dispatch, help the coordinators, help anybody out there, even the mechanics and you know the shop values that they have in order to cut down on time and make trucking a little more efficient. Now, he said the industry shouldn't have a huge hill to climb, as a lot of these technologies are naturally going to involve from vendors who have already done the development, and it's also beginning to come more from the OEMs. One thing Field said fleets can look forward to OEMs are making technology pilots more accessible. Often a pilot involves six months or more of work just to get started as fleets go through non-disclosure agreements, deciding which vehicles to deploy the technology on and then integrating things. He said they're now becoming more push-button because ease of integration is pertinent if fleets are going to test and deploy these technologies.

Speaker 2:

The vehicles are kind of like Steve Jobs' original iPhone announcement it was a camera phone, mp3 player and internet all in one. The vehicle has mobile communications, a display, cameras, microphones All those technologies are coming into play now that it is going to be a smart truck, but a lot of us out there still don't utilize a lot of that stuff. I work for a farm. We don't have cameras, we don't have anything. The most we have is gps tracking so that my boss can look at a map, say okay, this truck's here, this truck's here in case our people were contracted with call them. Say, hey, we've got this unexpected load. Can you? You get a truck out there. He can find out who's closest to delivery, who's furthest away from pickup and who can possibly take that extra job on for the day. That's the technology that we use and that is it, besides cell phones, of course, but anyway, think about that.

Speaker 2:

Do your research on AI. I'm still very nervous about it. I personally don't like and I don't want to use it for editing. I don't want to use it for a lot of things, because then I'll get complacent. I'll end up posting audio that has stuff in it that I never would have let be in it or have deducted something that I certainly wanted to be in it. Ai is never going to be smart enough for me. I mean, they're going to be smart where they can gather information within a split second, but they're not going to know the human element involved, and I think that's what AI is going to miss forever and ever, regardless of who programs it.

Speaker 2:

Now a quick reminder for you Peterbilt and Kenworth owners there has been a recall of almost 4,000 Peterbilt's and Kenworth's for a steering issue Very, very important. To get it checked out. I would park the truck immediately. That's my personal opinion. Repairs are needed to fix a potential loss of control in numerous Kenworth and Peterbilt model years and I don't know how you guys are going to handle this If you have to park the truck right away and you only have one. Are they going to give you a loaner? I don't know the answer to any of this these questions, because none of our peter bills fall within the category of recall, but I guarantee you, if they did, we would be raised in a stink, because we need to cover our customers.

Speaker 2:

The owners are advised to not drive the vehicles until they are fixed, given the given the possibility of a complete loss of steering control. That is so scary. Can you imagine doing 70 miles an hour and go to make a slight curve and all of a sudden that steering wheel isn't going anywhere, especially when you're heading to an embankment over the side of a bridge? Yeah, you don't want that. That is life or death. Ladies and gentlemen, do not take it in your hands. Go to the recall page. Check out your VIN number If it is subject to recall. Park that son of a gun, because we don't want to see you dead. Thank you, guys for listening to and or downloading my podcast. Check out all my links down below in the description. I hope you can join my Facebook, maybe join my Instagram. I put on some funny videos. It's not all about trucking, it's actually about having some fun. So you guys have a great day. God bless, be safe and, as always, keep it between the lines. Driver.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for listening to Roland 18 Podcast. Please visit my website at mediaiowacom or the podcast page at roland18podcastcom.