Trailer Tracking Aids Efficiency at J.B. Hunt

When Kay Palmer arrived at J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc. in 1988, a big part of the information technology department was pen and paper. Today, both trucks and trailers can be tracked whenever and wherever across the country through satellite technology.

Palmer, chief information officer at Hunt, has helped lead the trucking giant into the new millennium. She brushes aside comments about being a high-ranking female in a male-dominated business, opting instead to discuss the latest state-of-the-art technological advances at the company.

“The biggest thing right now is trailer tracking,” Palmer said. “We’ve had on-board computers for drivers since around 1990, but it hasn’t been a good economic deal for the trailer. On-board computers are for satellite tracking the truck, but once the trailer was dropped at a customer’s site, we didn’t have any way of knowing when it was unloaded. And a lot of time it may have been moved by the customer.”

In May, Hunt ordered 17,000 Terion FleetView Trailer Monitoring Systems, a move Palmer called one of the biggest commitments made by a publicly held company carrier.

Since cellular rates have remained relatively flat, Hunt benefits from Terion’s ability to move more data across the airwaves at a minimal cost.

Currently, 3,200 Hunt trailers use the system. Palmer said the plan is to have all of the systems installed by the end of the year. Hunt’s intermodal line cannot use the system because of its containers.

“The neat thing now is we not only know where the trailer is, but we know when it was loaded and if it was loaded,” Palmer said. “Sometimes customers keep it sitting on their yard for a day or two. This way we increase utilization before it incurs detention charges. It’s hard to charge for detention if we don’t really know. But this tells us.”

Palmer, a 1985 computer science graduate from Harding University in Searcy, worked for Electronic Data Systems in Dallas for three years before getting back to her home state with Hunt. She is currently working toward her MBA at the University of Arkansas.

“I liked Dallas, but I got tired of it after three years,” Palmer said. “And I wanted to get back to Northwest Arkansas. I like hiking and canoeing, and this is a great place to do those.”

When she joined Hunt, Palmer’s department had 45 employees. Today, it has about 300. However, more employees has not meant more chaos. In fact, Palmer said the flow of information throughout the company is better than ever.

“The main change in general has been taking information from a very centralized, hard-to-get-at place to creating data warehouses,” Palmer said. “When I first got here you couldn’t get anything in our department without going elsewhere. Now, there are very few reports my department creates directly. Now, we can do profit and loss at tractor, lane level and customer level. And we’ve progressed even more the last few years through Web technology. Our customers can see how we’re managing their business with supply chain costs, etc.”

Business-to-business use of technology is “heavy” in the transportation field, particularly connecting suppliers to outside carriers, Palmer said. And the Internet has enabled Hunt to increase automation. Previously, the only methods were via fax machine or long distance. “Faxing was too cumbersome,” Palmer said, “and calls were too expensive.”

Palmer said that Hunt is looking into wireless communication with local drivers. Computers are currently used.

Technology has also kept carrier companies on their toes like never before. Today, some shippers send out electronic orders. If a carrier doesn’t respond within 30 minutes, the shipper assumes the carrier rejected the offer. It’s machines talking to machines. And Palmer said a system failure can mean loss of much revenue.

“In ’88 if your system went down, you could still accept calls and orders, then write them down on a piece of paper for billing,” Palmer said. “Now, people want real-time answers.”